Hello 2010, goodbye Prof. Samuelson
by Benjamin on January 1, 2010
2010 has just about started across the world. It is 3.30pm in Delhi where I am typing, but it’s only 10pm in 2009 if you are on American Samoa (GMT -12). It is perhaps appropriate that we remember back and look forward at the same time. In the flat I am visiting in Delhi is an old issue of the Economist, which asks – “Where did our 3 Trillion dollars go?”. A special report on the banking systems failure and bail-out from the year that went. Nostalgic. The article suggests that banks will have to renew their social contract and re-think their structure. As we have seen in the last few months, relatively little reflection and none of this has come to fruition. As someone once quipped; “History has only taught us one thing: That no-one learns from History” – Amen.
2009 was also the year when a political scientist got the Nobel remembrance prize. The best quality work in economics again comes from non-economists, and in a crisis it is given to someone outside the ‘mainstream’. When Kahneman got the prize it was for an equally excellent body of work, which was read by more than just economists. When Merton and Scholes got it in 1997, they ruined the financial system. By 2001 the lesson was forgotten, I hope 2010 is not the year when the 2008-09 crisis is forgotten too, but lets see if Fama doesn’t get it next year. Then we’ll know.
Finally 2009 was the year we lost Professor Samuelson. A man who epitomized economics in the 20th century, not always for his theoretical ideas, nor for his (plaudable) approach to mathematics, but for introducing the textbook. Economics post-Samuelson became dominated by textbook instruction which for better or worse has spread economics much beyond a few specialised departments. Whether it needs re-thinking is a question posed in the latest International Review of Economics Education, but for now, lets look forward while remembering the past. In his excellent obituary in The Mint (India’s Wall Street Journal Partner), a fellow New Schooler has provided a good start to to doing just that, by remembering Prof. Samuelson. Happy New Year
