Similar to a former post of mine about econometrics, this Chronicle article makes the case that the institutional incarnation of economics (i.e. economics as an academic discipline embedded in university and college institutions and its attendant culture) needs a reality-check; that is, needs to be reacquainted with the actual practice of economics in society and its consequences. But the way in which that reacquainting is imagined sounds suspiciously like a call for considering the importance of societal impacts.
Critics want an alternative vision—or visions—of the discipline to be more widely accepted. “We need an economics that aims to secure long-run human well-being, not an economics preoccupied with maximizing short-run output and profits,” reads the mission statement of a new group, called Econ4, which was started at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in September.
Further on in the article:
“Our basic aim is to try to produce a change in economics in the United States,” said James K. Boyce, professor of economics at UMass-Amherst, and a founder of the group. “We see a connection in how the economy is such a mess and what has happened in the economics profession over the last two decades.”
The continuing political debate over whether the government should intervene in the markets, or whether they should be left to themselves, also needs to be reframed, Mr. Boyce said. “The central question is the distribution of wealth and power,” because the two are increasingly correlated.
“If you don’t have purchasing power, you lose when markets operate. If you don’t have political power, you lose when it comes to how governments operate,” he said. “Do we live in a democracy or an oligarchy?”
In other words, what is needed is for economics to become more accountable for its positive and negative impacts upon the health of the economic system and, thus, societal wellbeing. NSF has been making a similar case regarding basic scientific research since before the revision of its peer review process to include considerations of research’s broader impacts in 1997. Perhaps applying this same argument to economics, which has just as much sway in and influence over society as science and technology, will draw more attention to for responsive and responsible research.
The overarching point here is that the discipline of economics does not operate in a vacuum, much as it may advertise such for the sake of maintaining a patina of scientific-like rigor. There are much larger issues at stake in the practice of modern economics than the distribution of goods and services, or relative international gains in GDP; what is at stake is not only the kind of country in which we actually live, but the kind of country in which we want to be living. The slide from a democratic republic to an oligarchy, or further into a tyranny, can be quick. A responsive practice of economic study could perhaps pick up on its symptoms, but only if it first recognizes the irresponsibility of presuming societal consequences to be irrelevant to its professional activity.