New School Economic Review

The Mainstream is Back; with prejudice

by Benjamin on January 24, 2010

If you saw the front page of the economist this week you might quickly conclude that the Washington Consensus and Neo-Classical economics is back in the ascendancy. “STOP!” shouts the front page, “The backlash against big government” and a suitably Leviathan-cum-Ghostbuster’s-Slimer picture swallowing the poor citizen follows. That the poor citizen looks like a suited and booted businessman is probably a freudian slip, but the image tells the story. Let business get on with its work and start cutting back on the government.

For the first time, to my memory, the front page leader runs onto the second page, and the reason is simple. The Economist is confused. It wants to encourage us to cut back on the government, limit its impact but it also wants us to support banks being propped up, government stimulus packages and systems of governance by that same government (a lesson of Haiti if not the global recession).  So why is the Economist promoting and opposing ‘big’ government in the same editorial?

Their problem is one of prejudice, of ideology. Don’t take my words for it, the Economist is refreshingly open in stating the ideology to which it clings after reality has illustrated the problems with lack of government intervention in market places:

In these circumstances, hard rules make little sense. But prejudices are still useful – and this newspapers prejudice is to look for ways to make the state smaller. That is partly for philosophical reasons: we prefer to give power to individuals, rather than governments. But pragmatism also comes into it. (Economist Jan 23: Leader p. 9)

They can’t be serious! They oppose government on the philosophical grounds that individuals need to be empowered and protected from big scary states. So much for empirical evidence. Surely, if there’s anything the last 12 months have shown us it is that the individual is not under threat from the state as the leviathan in the 21st century. Yes in the 17th century when Hobbes wrote his book the state was all powerful (Think Cromwell). And if we talk of Myanmar or such states then yes sure. But in today’s market economy the label of Leviathan should be applied to those enitites ‘too big to fail’ – companies.

Banks have been given a bad reputation these last months, but for good reason. Oil, media, pharma, cigarettes, software – all of these industries have their monopolists and their scare stories. Aren’t they the 21st century  leviathan? What governments try to do is to support both companies and individual citizens. Where the company is responsible to the shareholder, the government is responsible to the electorate – sort of. The pragmatism refered to by the Economist is their fear of government mandarins directing private activity. A fair concern, but is that any more fair than worrying about the lobbying and advertising campaigns of monopolies and oligopolies? Too quickly will we forget what has happened in the last year, and move back to a trajectory of prejudice and ideology without understanding the economy or its features.

I wish that the academic economic community would be as open as the economist in declaring its inherent biases or perhaps investigating them. Yes, David Colander and others talked about how we should change the way we teach economics as a result of the crisis at this year’s AEA meeting, but he’s been saying that for a while and I don’t think anyone will change their ways. Sad.

Educating educators

by Benjamin on May 11, 2009

A topic close to my heart is the quality of teaching in universities, or sometimes the lack of it. A good lecturer inspires us while a bad lecturer can truly kill the wish to study any subject. In this sense it baffles me that we do not teach ‘presentations & teaching’ to graduate students, or at least to Ph.D. Students. Even the undergraduates could benefit from such a subject.

Creating interesting and good presentations is a skill which people retain for life. The ability to pitch a project to investors, present a technical subject or convince 100 undergrads of a theoretical idea all fall under the same heading of ‘presentation’. So why don’t we focus on doing more about it in higher education?

I suspect part of the answer lies with the fact that the academics who actually put on a really good lecture, don’t know how to teach that skill to others. When I say “Really Good” I am talking about the stuff that Al Gore does in his environmental talks, I am talking about Steve Jobs MacWorld Keynote Speeches, I am thinking of documentaries like Planet Earth and adverts which resonate and stay with us, like this 2006 Argentinian election ad. They are all memorable, interesting and informs the audience, much like the “Lost Generation” clip below, inspired by the Election Advert:

As lecturers and Teachers we should be inspirational. So I think that we in academia can learn a lot from people who give good presentations, and we can use it to our benefit in lectures. I am not suggesting that technical subjects should become cartoonish or silly entertainment, what I am suggesting is that lectures can be delivered (regardless of the topic) in interesting ways which motivates students, and not as repetitions of the text-book, (which students will read without you anyway). Not every talk needs slides, and not every talk needs problem solving, the issue is to know when each tool is appropriate as an interested audience is always key.

Some of my best lectures were on Gerrard Debreu’s Theory of Value (free here), a book I would recommend to no-one, but which was taught in a manner that made the topic and its author come alive. For those in the know, Debreu’s book is anything but fun, so if there is hope for that, imagine what can be done with exciting subjects like the development of whole nations or the political intrigue of growth policies? 

So what can be done? Can we teach people to do good presentations, not meaning 1 slide, 7 bullet points, 7 words, but something you could get on a stage with (a lecture hall is a stage) and interest your students – or friends? – with for two hours. (I invited a friend of mine to a lecture I gave after having harped on about teaching at home, and must admit I was a lot more nervous about her [educated] reaction to my presentation than my undergrads’ – I recommend it, it’s a good experiment in self-improvement / flagelation). I think teaching ‘presentation skills’ can be done, but I do not think that we are properly equipped to address the issue as academics yet. Simply because we haven’t been taught anything about doing good presentations or good lectures ourselves. For us it was assumed that we would catch on to good practice (or more likely, avoid the worst practice) as we sat through conferences, lectures and seminar talks. Osmosis, however, can only do so much, and there’s a lot to do learn before we can teach the next generation how to take to the stage in the world around us. Personally I am reading much more, and have been contributing to the British Economics Networks series on their ‘New Lecturers Workshop’ where I’ve just finished a quick 2k article on undergrad teaching [yup, shameless self-promotion, you spotted it], with some videos and references to things which I feel have impacted my own teaching in the last six months, It’s a long road ahead, but hey, it’s been a lot of fun so far.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

by Benjamin on February 13, 2009

Since the start of term I have attended quite a few introductory sessions to various economics classes. Here I keep hearing my colleagues telling the students that they are privileged to be living in such exciting times, and to learn economics when it is so topical.

What everyone neglects to tell the students, is that we have no idea what’s going on, while the slides and theories from last years classes – which we may recycle – won’t shed any light on what’s actually going on…

Shame really, because I think it is a great time to be doing economics, but now people are excited about studying the actual economy and not slavishly believing in the complete truth of economics as revealed by standard axioms. So let’s try and reverse the process Leijonhufvud complained about:

Once the Cobb-Douglass production function was invented, no economist has since studied production
-Axel Leijonhufvud (2002: 23-4)

Go on, read (or teach?) the U.S. stimulus package (or maybe our suggested edit to the package), find out how money supply really works in the economy, see what institutions actually do and how the global financial system works (Basel II anyone?), without having to believe in the effective market hypothesis. It’s a brave new world out there – at least for the next few months.