Democratizing Economics: A Case for Reform

In January this year, the Chief Economist of the Bank of England, Andrew Haldane publicly acknowledged the failure of economic models to successfully predict the effect of Brexit. The doom and gloom forecasted by economists were proven to be very far from the truth and the UK economy remained in fact stable after Brexit and growth remained stronger than ever. This is not the only instance where economics has utterly failed to provide helpful answers. 

Some of those only resulted in benign outcomes but some, however, had catastrophic consequences that left millions jobless and left struggling on the streets. The 2008 financial crisis and its subsequent recessions were probably among the most disastrous out of all the failings of the economists. This of course begs the question: How did economics come to this? It's as if economics is not altogether not that different from astrology. This article contends that the reason why economics has thus far exhibited a poor track record is due to the fact that the way it has been taught is inherently undemocratic.

In what way is mainstream economics undemocratic? Much of its dictatorial tendencies can really be traced back to how it is taught to aspiring students. Economics has always been the most peculiar one among the other social sciences. Whereas first-year undergraduate students in fields such as psychology would be met with a plethora of different and opposing intellectual schools and paradigms, economics students seldom ever meet such variety in their textbooks. 

In fact, the way economics is taught in textbooks seems to mostly resemble the way physics is taught. Indifference curves and average cost curves are taught as if they are truths as incorruptible and authentic as Newtonian laws of physics. Unfortunately for economics students such as myself, they are not. Time and time again economics and its central tenets have been shown to be flawed and yet time and time again economics continues to stick to the status quo as if nothing has happened. 

The newest developments in the field that runs contrary to the central tenets of economics such as behavioural economics only receive brief mentions in mainstream economics textbook despite its paramount importance. Only later on in their courses will students of economics learn fully about these new developments, long after the mantra of hyper-rationality and utility maximization have been completely learned and rotely memorized.

Heterodox (non-mainstream) ideas probably suffer a worse fate under the status quo. They are never heard nor taught outside history of economic thought classes despite having insights that can complement or even are superior to that of conventional ideas. Mainstream economic thinking often is derived from the actions of a rational agent, completely free of societal, political and historical influences. While this approach of understanding the economy may give rich insights, they are not enough. 

Humans are social creatures and their actions are often the result of influences outside of their economic needs. This is where heterodox ideas may play a key role. Heterodox ideas are unified in their common principle that the economy must be studied along with the historical, sociological, and political forces that have shaped the economy thus far. 

Thus, with the combined insights of mainstream and heterodox ideas, economics would have been a far more democratic scientific discipline much able to handle the problems it was meant to provide solutions for. That has not unfortunately materialized yet and economics education remain ever resilient to heterodox ideas. 

As a result, students graduate with an economics degree without ever learning much about the many diverse schools of thought such as Marxian, Institutionalist, Post-Keynesian, Austrian, Feminist, and Ecological economic schools. Most of them later on become policymakers and leaders in the business world without all the necessary arsenal of arms to cope with the various complications that might exist in the economy.

The next question would be, can something be done about this? Can the state of economics education be changed? The answer is a resolute yes. Changing the way economics is taught, however, requires grassroots activism from the students of economics themselves. It's often the case that mainstream economic academicians are far too entrenched in mainstream thinking only such that efforts to try and change their mind is quite fruitless. 

Fortunately, we have been seeing successful revolutions through a bottom-up approach. Economics undergraduates at the University of Manchester, for example, has been successful at spearheading efforts of enforcing diversity within their curricula. Assistance has also been received from certain outside actors.