Although neoclassical economics relies on assumptions that should have been discarded long ago, it remains the mainstream orthodoxy. Three recent books, and one older one, help to show why its staying power should be regarded as a scandal.
- Mason Gaffney and Fred Harrison, The Corruption of Economics, Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers Ltd., 2006 (first published 1994).
Stephen A. Marglin, Raising Keynes: A Twenty-First-Century General Theory, Harvard University Press, 2021.
Alessandro Roncaglia, The Age of Fragmentation: A History of Contemporary Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Robert Skidelsky, What’s Wrong with Economics?: A Primer for the Perplexed, Yale University Press, 2020.
AUSTIN – Self-regarding economics departments at prestigious academic institutions no longer bother to teach the history of economic thought – a field that I studied at Yale University in 1977, forever compromising my academic career. Why was the topic abandoned – and even shunned and mocked? Students with a skeptical turn of mind would not be wrong to suspect that it was for scandalous reasons (as when, in past centuries, inconvenient aunts were locked away in garrets).
Stephen A. Marglin, Raising Keynes: A Twenty-First-Century General Theory, Harvard University Press, 2021.
Alessandro Roncaglia, The Age of Fragmentation: A History of Contemporary Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Robert Skidelsky, What’s Wrong with Economics?: A Primer for the Perplexed, Yale University Press, 2020.
AUSTIN – Self-regarding economics departments at prestigious academic institutions no longer bother to teach the history of economic thought – a field that I studied at Yale University in 1977, forever compromising my academic career. Why was the topic abandoned – and even shunned and mocked? Students with a skeptical turn of mind would not be wrong to suspect that it was for scandalous reasons (as when, in past centuries, inconvenient aunts were locked away in garrets).