Re: economics education

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

India isn't under the US thumb the way Latin America is. (I was thinking about Latin America and generalizing.) There is competition, but at least in Latin America, most economics training comes from the US. During the Cold War, the old USSR, etc. did indeed train economists, but most of them couldn't get jobs outside Cuba or (for awhile) Chile. Some of this can be generalized outside of Latin America.
Jim Devine

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Anthony D'Costa [mailto:dcosta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
	Sent: Fri 5/21/2004 9:40 PM 
	To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
	Cc: 
	Subject: Re: [PEN-L] economics education
	
	

	But many Indian economists trained in the US still remain staunch
	nationalists.  That has to do with the fact most come (came) at the
	graduate level.  Besides, the US has competition with the UK (the
	Oxbridge types) and much earlier with the fSU, E Germany, and the like.
	
	cheers, anthony
	xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
	Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor
	Comparative International Development
	University of Washington                        Campus Box 358436
	1900 Commerce Street
	Tacoma, WA 98402, USA
	
	Phone: (253) 692-4462
	Fax :  (253) 692-5718
	xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
	
	On Fri, 21 May 2004, Devine, James wrote:
	
	> I recently saw the film "Y Tu Mama Tambien." This film is about the
	> sexual and other adventures of two Mexican youth, one from the upper
	> crust and one from the professional middle class. Ignoring the (very
	> interesting) sexual dimension, it reminded me of a Chilean graduate
	> student I knew at UC-Berkeley. Like him, the two youth spent a lot of
	> time smoking dope. Unlike in the U.S. at the time (the mid-1970s), in
	> Chile marijuana was the drug of choice for only the upper classes. (Even
	> though pot was effectively free for the taking in Chile at the time!)
	> This seemed to be true in the movie, too.
	>
	> The other opiate was economics education. The rich kid in the movie was
	> being pressed to major in economics (and to abandon literature) by his
	> parents, while my friend was of course studying economics. At the end of
	> the movie, the rich kid was chastened and had decided to embrace
	> economics. (Sorry to give the ending away!)  It seems that in much or
	> most of what used be called the "third world," economics is the field of
	> choice of ambitious members of the richer classes. Further, it seems
	> that a lot of the prime ministers -- most recently in India -- are
	> trained in economics (and thus dubbed "technocrats").
	>
	> The kind of economics most embraced is the Washington Consensus, the
	> neo-liberalism of the IMF, World Bank, and the US Treasury. The third
	> world sends its richer kids to study this economics in the economics
	> equivalent of the "School of the Americas" (the University of Chicago,
	> MIT, etc.) and then the first world sends them back to institute
	> structural adjustment, free trade and capital flows, austerity, and
	> privatization. It's reminiscent of the way in which the "wogs"
	> (colonized populations) used to send their best & brightest to England
	> to learn how to help the Brits run the colonies.
	>
	> Jim Devine
	>