Free market economics and Manchester University

Via the Guardian, Orthodox economists failed market test

After all, the large majority of economists who predicted the crisis rejected the dominant neoclassical thinking: from Dean Baker and Steve Keen to Ann Pettifor, Paul Krugman and David Harvey. Whether Keynesians, post-Keynesians or Marxists, none accepted the neoliberal ideology that had held sway for 30 years; and all understood that, contrary to orthodoxy, deregulated markets don’t tend towards equilibrium but deepen the economy’s tendency to systemic crisis.

Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve and high priest of deregulation, at least had the honesty to admit his view of the world had been proved “not right”. The same cannot be said for others. Eugene Fama, architect of the “efficient markets hypothesis” underpinning financial deregulation, concedes he doesn’t know what “causes recessions” – but insists his theory has been vindicated anyway. Most mainstream economists have carried on as if nothing had happened.

Many of their students, though, have had enough. A revolt against the orthodoxy has been smouldering for years and now seems to have gone critical. Fed up with parallel universe theories that have little to say about the world they’re interested in, students at Manchester University have set up a post-crash economics society with 800 members…

More on economic students at the Manchester University, England… Economics students and the free market syllabus

Chang, ( Ha-Joon Chang, who teaches economics at Cambridge University) who is a reader in the political economy of development at Cambridge, said he agreed with the society’s premise. The teaching of economics was increasingly confined to arcane mathematical models, he said. “Students are not even prepared for the commercial world. Few [students] know what is going on in China and how it influences the global economic situation. Even worse, I’ve met American students who have never heard of Keynes.”

In June a network of young economics students, thinkers and writers set up Rethinking Economics, a campaign group to challenge what they say is the predominant narrative in the subject.

Earle said students across Britain were being taught neoclassical economics “as if it was the only theory”.

Their statement is here.

(h/t Stormy)