Re: The conflict at Notre Dame

[Clifford Poirot <cpoirot@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul,

I find your vision to be entirely unattractive. I can't imagine a worse
outcome than having two competing, rigidly defined orthodoxies competing
against each other, with members of both camps conspiring to do the other in
(except for one orthodoxy ruthlessly punising all others). This outcome
would also require and indeed lead to, norming and enforcement within the
camps.

I personally witnessed this at Utah, where orthodox Marxists organized
themsevles behind a single general theory to punish dissenting Marxists and
Institutionalists. Sure, the Marxists retained control of the department and
thus managed to stave off the old guard neo-classicals. So a victory of
sorts was achieved and a heterodox department was maintained. I think this
is a hollow victory.

We cannot have a General Theory of the sort you propose, because you cannot
have real axioms in the social sciences and thus derive the theory
inexorably within a closed system of logic. Interestingly, E.K. Hunt makes
the same argument that you do, but his axiom is the labor theory of value
thus leading to a "General Theory" that Hunt believes is superior to PK and
Institutionalism, and clearly, N.C. How would I ever choose between your
"self-evident axioms" E.K's self evident axioms? The best you can have is
some a priori assumptions that serve as axioms-but we should not kid
ourselves unless we really believe the economy is a thing of which we can
have knowledge "of the thing itself".

My argument about Stiglitz is Lakatosian. At the level of the hard core, I
disagree with Stiglitz. At the level of the protective belt, I find Stiglitz
dealing with real world problems. Thus I see the challenge to heterodox
economists like myself is how to take research from the protective belt
driven by another "hard core" and find a way to make it consistent with my
own "hard core". I disagree that "hard cores" must be "hard" or "rigid". We
all have them. They may be immutable to direct falsification. But we should
at least be willing to re-examine them in the light of new evidence and
experience-or else, we are not practicing social science, we are practicing
an odd sort of religion that equates economic axioms with such matters as
transforming wafers into flesh.



-----Original Message-----
From: pdavidso [mailto:pdavidso@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 4:56 PM
To: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.
Cc: pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: The conflict at Notre Dame


>===== Original Message From "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
=====
>     At least one of them, Jensen, who is quoted as being one
>of those supporting the split in the department, is actually
>already a joint appointee between the two departments.
>I am afraid that part of what is going on is personal agendas
>by the mainstreamers in the department, who are frustrated
>at not being in control, and who have gone to this idiot dean
>to enlist him in their internal fight.  Of course, this is often how
>these sorts of things play out.  It certainly would be much better
>if the two factions could manage a reasonable modus vivendi
>within the department.  But that does not seem to be the case.


IT NEVER IS THE CASE bARKELEY!!

I have had this experience twice-- Once at Rutgers where there were at the
maximum 7 Post Keynesian or other heterodox economists among a faculty of 81

faculty members -- in five separate4 economics departments--
 Rutgers College Department, Douglass College Department; Livingstone
College
Department; Cook College Department, General Studies Department.
Nevertheless
there was an agreement that students in all departments would be exposed to
neoclassical economics as well as heterodox material -- in order to insure
that students understood the mainstream and could go to any graduate program

they applied for.

At the tiime each department had a Chair and I was the Area wide Chair --
that
is, tall the Department Chairs reported both to the Dean of their various
schools and to me as Area Wide Chair.

With the support of the Dean of Livingston College and at the urging of the
provost, the Livniingston College Department was to hous all the heterodox
economists -- except me as I was already on the favulty of the Rutgers
College
Department.  The 7 heterodox economists ouitpuublished the other 74
neoclassical economists put together -- including publications in such
Establishment journals as the EJ, the JEL, Brookings Papers on Economic
Activity, Economic Inquiry, etc.


Nevertheless the other 74 members joined forces to lobby Deans to prevent
the
youing heterodox economists from receiving tenure-- all tenure appointments
had to be voted on by every member of the economics discipline.  And I ended

up having to fight all the Deans (except initially the Livingston College
Dean).

Ultimately they wore me down {and when my son also developed Cancer at the
same time] I threw in the towel and resigned and the neoclassical economists

took over. and made life miserable for the hterodox economists -- e.g.,
forcing Jan Kregel to teach courses in accounting, checkboarding teaching
assignments for heterodox economists, etc.

 when I left Rutgers and joined University of Tennessee in 1986 the
Institutional Economists were in control of a Department of approximately 20

economists. Again there was many young mainstream economists --since it was
felt that the students had to be exposed to this material as well. But as
Retirement etc depleted the number of heterodox economists, the mainstream
increased their voting power.  The crucial test occurred when a Chair of
Excellence in Microeconomics was made available. Initially a famous orthodox

economist applied for this high paying chair -- and we all (heterodox and
mainstream) voted for his appointment. Unfortunately he apparently only used

the offer to get a rtaise at his home University.

Ultimately the mainstream people pushed Anne Mathew out of the Chair of the
department and then out of the economics department -- she preferred to be
in
a more hospitable History department.

however when another professor position in microeconomics opened up -- and a

very good heterodox young person applied and a terrible mainstream young
person were competitors -- the mainstream economists in the department
admitted that the mainstream applicant was terrible and the heterodox
applicant was not bad -- but they refused to voted positively for either.
The
result no heterodox economists was ever appointed since 1986 and many
neoclassical economists were appointed.

The moral of this story is if you let any mainstreamers into the department
--
and especially when the Deans look to departments as profit centers to get
grants from mainstream foundations-- the heterodox  are going to be
marginalized.

Moreover, the heterodox economists refuse to get behind a single "general
theory" and rather splinter into small cliques -- even some arguing that
some
mainstreamers (e.g., Stiglitz) are getting close to Post Keynesians on some
issues -- even though a logically consistent mainstream theory fails to
support them -- so they introduce ad hoc constraints on the pricing system
or
nonlinear dynamics, etc-- with enough non linearities you can demonstrate
any
result you want.

Until heterodox economists unite behind a simple "general theory" they are
going to  be losers.

Paul

Paul Davidson
Editor, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics
University of Tennessee
SMC 503
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0550
phone # (561)369-1951; fax #(561)369-1951;
email pdavidson@xxxxxxx
http://econ.bus.utk.edu/davidsonextra/Davidson.html