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To: pae news
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2000 6:43 PM
Subject: post-autistic economics newsletter, No. 2, October
2000 sanity, humanity and
science
post-autistic economics
newsletter
No. 2, 3 October 2000
Subscribers in 36
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FRANCE
"It was in the beginning," opens the
Le Monde article of September 13th, "a modest initiative,
almost confidential. It has now become a subject of important debate
which has put in a state of effervescence the community of economists.
Should not the teaching of economics in universities be rethought?" ( www.lemonde.fr/article/0,2320,93489,00.html )
The first issue of this newsletter reported on
the events leading to this "effervescence". Briefly, they were as
follows.
In June a small group of economics
students put on the web ( www.respublica.fr/autisme-economie )
a petition protesting against economics' "uncontrolled use of
mathematics". This indulgence, it said, creates "a true
schizophrenia" because the mathematics has "become an end in itself"
resulting in an "autistic science". The petition called
for an end both to this and to the repressive domination of
neoclassical theory in the curriculum. The students called
instead for a pluralism of approaches with emphasis on engagement with
economic realities. Within two weeks the student
petition had 150 signatures, many from France's most prestigious
universities. The students publicized these results. On
the 21st of June Le Monde picked up the story. It
featured a lengthy and sympathetic article on the students' call for
reform. ( www.lemonde.fr/article_impression/0,2322,72463,00.html ) Other French
newspapers and magazines, as well as TV and radio, soon followed with the
result that the number of signatures on the economics students' petition reached
600.
The perceived seriousness of the
controversy increased when at the end of June some professors
launched a petition of their own ( www.republica.fr/autisme-economie
), backing the students and offering further analysis and
evidence supporting the need for reform. The French minister of
education announced that he was looking into the matter. Then in July
everyone left for "the long vac".
Now they are returning and Le Monde
has reopened the public debate. So too has the national radio
network, "French Culture", which on 21 September carried a program
on the controversy, featuring two students and a professor from the
post-autistic camp. Nor has the government forgotten about it.
Le Monde reports that Jack Lang, the minister of
education, has informed it that soon he will be announcing "the formation of
a commission charged with making an evaluation of the situation and
submitting to him some proposals. An economist of renown has been
approached about leading this investigation."
Meanwhile the students and the reformist
academics are regrouping in preparation for the next stage of the
campaign. A meeting of the petition signatories, now 800, is being
held at the Sorbonne on October 4th. Student leaders, Olivier Vaury
and Gilles Raveaud, report that following the Paris
meeting the pluralists will organize and conduct debates in
universities throughout France. (The movement which began in the
capital is now nation-wide.) These debates will continue through
mid-November. Then in December a big national meeting is being planned for
Paris. This will include both students and teachers committed
to reform and will develop detailed, concrete criticism and
proposals. Speaking for the students, Raveaud
adds, "and we will claim our place" in the governmental commission that is being
set up.
The post-autistic economics movement
in France is also looking forward to more coverage in periodicals,
including economics journals. The national newspaper Libération,
which featured a full page on the crises in economics in its July 31st issue, is
planning another such feature for late October. Vaury
reports that "we will have some important articles in Télérama
(2.5 million readers) and there will be articles on this issue in L'Economie
Politque (November edition)." Another article is scheduled to appear
in the journal Alternatives Economiques.
Student leaders report,
that when last summer it began to
appear that the reform movement in France was not about to
go away, some neoclassicists tried to dismiss it as a Trotskyite conspiracy
which included Le Monde. This convinced no one, and since
then things seemed to have moved on. For example, the week before last there was a conference at the Sorbonne,
celebrating the 50th anniversary of the mainstream La Revue
Economique. Attendees report that discussions spontaneously
diverged to issues that have been raised by the reformists.
Watch this space for further
developments.
GLOBAL
French
economics students and teachers have found a formula for
getting the reform of economics and economics teaching onto public and
professional agendas. Its basic ingredients are two kinds of
petition, a website (or sites) on which the petitions are posted for signing,
and an email newsletter for co-ordinating and publicizing these. The
pae
newsletter wants to encourage and assist people everywhere to
apply the "French formula", modified to fit local conditions. It also
wishes to provide the means by which local, regional and national
successes can be joined together and globalized. Toward
these ends, it will offer the following.
* hyperlinks with all petition websites,
* a geographical index of petition websites,
*
tables of website results,
* a
students' petition and a teachers' petition which can be "signed" by
anyone visiting
the site, and lists of the petition signatories,
* documents related to the post-autistic economics
movement,
*
back issues of the post-autistic economics
newsletter.
pae standard
form student petition,
based on the students' petition
circulated in France
open letter from economics
students
to professors and others
responsible
for the teaching of this
discipline
We, economics students in the
university(ies) of ________________,
declare ourselves to be generally
dissatisfied with the teaching that we receive.
This is so for the following
reasons:
1. We wish to escape from
imaginary worlds!
Most of us have chosen to study economics so as
to acquire a deep understanding of the economic phenomena with which the
citizens of today are confronted. But the teaching that is offered, that
is to say for the most part neoclassical theory or approaches derived from it,
does not generally answer this expectation. Indeed, even when the theory
legitimately detaches itself from contingencies in the first instance, it rarely
carries out the necessary return to the facts. The empirical side
(historical facts, functioning of institutions , study of the behaviors and
strategies of the agents . . . ) is almost nonexistent. Furthermore, this
gap in the teaching, this disregard for concrete realities, poses an enormous
problem for those who would like to render themselves useful to economic and
social actors.
2. We oppose the uncontrolled
use of mathematics!
The instrumental use of mathematics appears
necessary. But resort to mathematical formalization when it is not an
instrument but rather an end in itself, leads to a true schizophrenia in
relation to the real world. Formalization makes it easy to construct
exercises and to manipulate models whose significance is limited to finding "the
good result" (that is, the logical result following from the initial hypotheses)
in order to be able to write "a good paper". This custom, under the
pretence of being scientific, facilitates assessment and selection, but never
responds to the question that we are posing regarding contemporary economic
debates.
3. We are for a pluralism of
approaches in economics!
Too often the lectures leave no place for
reflection. Out of all the approaches to economic questions that exist,
generally only one is presented to us. This approach is suppose to explain
everything by means of a purely axiomatic process, as if this were THE economic
truth. We do not accept this dogmatism. We want a pluralism of
approaches, adapted to the complexity of the objects and to the uncertainty
surrounding most of the big questions in economics (unemployment, inequalities,
the place of financial markets, the advantages and disadvantages of free-trade,
globalization, economic development, etc.)
4. Call to teachers: wake up
before it is too late!
We appreciate that our professors are
themselves subject to some constraints. Nevertheless, we appeal to all
those who understand our claims and who wish for change. If serious reform
does not take place rapidly, the risk is great that economics students, whose
numbers are already decreasing, will abandon the field in mass, not because they
have lost interest, but because they have been cut off from the realities and
debates of the contemporary world.
We no longer want to have this
autistic science
imposed on us.
We do not ask for the impossible, but
only that good sense may prevail.
We hope, therefore, to be heard very
soon.
pae standard
form teachers' petition,
based on the professors' petition
circulated in France
Petition for a Debate on
the Teaching of Economics
This petition raises the following
problems:
1. the exclusion of theory that is not neoclassical from the
curriculum,
2. the mismatch between economics
teaching and economic reality,
3. the use of mathematics as an
end in itself rather than as a tool,
4. teaching methods that exclude
or prohibit critical thinking,
5. the need for a plurality of
approaches adapted to the complexity of
objects
analyzed.
In real sciences, explanation is focused on
actual phenomena. The validity and relevancy of a theory can only be
assessed through a confrontation with "facts". This is why we, along with
many students, deplore the development of a pedagogy in economics privileging
the presentation of theories and the building and manipulation of models without
considering their empirical relevance. This pedagogy highlights the formal
properties of model construction, while largely ignoring the relations of
models, if any, to economic realities. This is scientism. Under a
scientific approach, on the other hand, the first interest is to demonstrate the
informative power and efficiency of an abstraction vis à vis sets of
empirical phenomena. This should be the primary task of the
economist. It is not a mathematical issue.
The path for "getting back to the facts",
however, is not obvious. Every science rests on "facts" that are built up
and conceptualized. Different paradigms therefore appear, each of them
constituting different families of representation and modalities of
interpretation or constructions of reality.
Acknowledging the existence and role of
paradigms should not be used as an argument for setting up different citadels,
unquestionable from the outside. Paradigms should be confronted and
discussed. But this can not be done on the base of a "natural" or
immediate representation. One can not avoid using the tools provided by
statistics and econometrics. But performing a critical assessment of a
model should not be approached on an exclusively quantitative base. No
matter how rigorous from a formalistic point of view or tight its statistical
fit, any "economic law" or theorem needs always to be assessed for its relevancy
and validity regarding the context and type of situation to which it is
applied. One also needs to take into account the institutions, history,
environmental and geopolitical realities, strategies of actors and groups, the
sociological dimensions including gender relations, as well as more
epistemological matters. However, these dimensions of economics
are cruelly missing in the training of our students.
The situation could be improved by introducing
specialized courses. But it is not so much the addition of new courses
that is important, but rather the linking of different areas of knowledge in the
same training program. Students are calling for this linkage, and we
consider them right to do so. The fragmentation of our discipline should
be fought against. For example, macroeconomics should emphasize the
importance of institutional and ecological constraints, of structures, and of
the role of history.
This leads us to the issue of pluralism.
Pluralism is not just a matter of ideology, that is of different prejudices or
visions to which one is committed to expressing. Instead the existence of
different theories is also explained by the nature of the assumed hypotheses, by
the questioned asked, by the choice of a temporal spectrum, by the boundaries of
problems studied, and, not least, by the institutional and historical
context.
Pluralism must be part of the basic
culture of the economist. People in their research should be free
to develop the type and direction of thinking to which their convictions and
field of interest lead them. In a rapidly evolving and evermore complex
world, it is impossible to avoid and dangerous to discourage alternative
representations.
This leads us to question neoclassical
theory. The preponderant space it occupies is, of course, inconsistent
with pluralism. But there is an even more important issue here.
Neoclassicalism's fiction of a "rational" representative agent, its reliance on
the notion of equilibrium, and its insistence that prices constitute the main
(in not unique) determinant of market behavior are at odds with our own
beliefs. Our conception of economics is based on principles of behavior of
another kind. These include especially the existence and importance of
intersubjectivity between agents, the bounded rationality of agents, the
heterogeneity of agents, and the importance of economic behaviors based on
non-market factors. Power structures, including organizations, and
cultural and social fields should not be a priori
excluded.
The fact that in most cases the teaching
offered is limited to the neoclassical thesis is questionable also on ethical
grounds. Students are led to hold the false belief that not only is
neoclassical theory the only scientific stream, but also that scientificity is
simply a matter of axiomatics and/or formalized modeling.
With the students, we denounce the naive and
Weissmahr; Japan: Susumu
Takenaga; United States: Benjamin
Balak, Daniel Lien, Paul Surlis; At large: Paddy Quick
________________________________________________
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mailing lists and forums,
and to pass it on to interested parties,
especially students.
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