Education

New economic thinking has the potential to make political debates far more productive

What we’re reading: A weekly scan of published items relevant to the Institute’s work

A major shift is needed in the Econometrics curriculum for both graduate and undergraduate teaching to include modern topics.

Orthodox macroeconomics has become a place where visions die and hopes are banished, for both liberals and conservatives.

Join us for a reception at the ASSA conference in San Francisco

How much does the standard theory of externalities and public goods really say?

I describe the American economy in the twenty-first century as a dual economy in the spirit of W. Arthur Lewis.

This essay critically evaluates the benefits and costs of the dominant methodology in macroeconomics, the DSGE approach. Although the approach has led to great progress in some areas, it has also created biases and blind spots in the profession that hold back our understanding and our ability to govern the macroeconomy. There is great scope for progress in macroeconomics by judiciously pushing the boundaries of some of the methodological restrictions imposed by the DSGE approach.

Marc Lavoie discusses the methodological foundations of heterodox economics, and offers a very different model of money and credit, firms and pricing, consumer theory, effective demand and employment and growth theories.

Tania Singer on the key importance of understanding preferences and behavioral change.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking has awarded $2 million in grants to fund 21 different projects as part of the latest round of its research grant program.

Good incentives are no substitute for good citizens.

The extremely wise Robert Skidelsky has an excellent rant against Anglo-Saxon economics departments

In the past three years, students around the world have turned the heat of scrutiny onto our economics departments. Our call is strikingly uniform across our diverse cultures and languages: we want critical debate back in the economics curriculum.

I first came across economics students’ campaigns to revolutionise their education in that bastion of radical thought: the newsroom of the Financial Times.