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post-autistic economics |
Before going to the main points, I want to say that I
completely agree that teaching (and learning) is the basic issue and that to
my knowledge, even if some professors
have appealed against the student’s views, nothing similar has
appeared from the students’ side. My experience in teaching economics began in the late
70's. After spending 4 years as a high-school (Lycee) teacher, I have taught macroeconomics
at the University of Paris-10/Nanterre (where the department of economics is
probably one of the least autistic in France), before moving to the École des
Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, a specifically post-graduate institution. I have also taught regularly in
Moscow (at the Higher School of Economics and at Moscow University), and
taught many seminars in the USA, Italy and the UK. What French students described in their manifesto is the
plain truth and the result, not of France deviating from "good
economics" as taught in the USA, but, to the contrary of what Robert
Solow suggested, the French system converging with the US one. Now, what is the discussion mainly about? The focus is on
the link between teaching and science and the point is realism vs.
axiomatism. One of the most important issues raised by this movement is the
very fact that you can not separate tools and contents, teaching and what you
are supposed to teach. By engaging the battle on this field, the movement
already won a major epistemological victory. But, if even Solow acknowledges
that the discussion is not about mathematics in economics, clearly he does
not grasp the meaning of the "realist" requirement. I, however,
suspect that some of my post-autistic colleagues do not either. The real issue is not to know if the realistic content of
economics is to be increased just slightly or in a more meaningful way;
rather it is to know if realism is a central requirement or not. This leads
to an old but forgotten debate, the one about "natural" or
"exact" laws governing economic activities. Without going back to
Carl Menger, we have to remind ourselves that if there is something like such
laws, then realism is not a requirement for theorizing and a quest for
realism not only is not needed but could even prevent us from reaching a
complete understanding of a system obedient to laws. Now, what has usually been forgotten by people supporting
the axiomatist approach, and this is fairly obvious with Solow and Blanchard,
is the type of conditions required for "natural" or
"exact" laws to exist in economics. Either there is to be no
creative interaction between economic agents (Robinson Crusoe on his island
before the landing of Friday), or an agent's behavioural patterns are to be
context independent. The first condition implies there is no society and no
economy. The second one is a key assumption of neo-classical economics
(preferences are supposed to be context independent, transitive and
continuous). Unfortunately for our neo-classical colleagues, repeated
tests have amply demonstrated that preferences are context-dependant (Amos
Tversky's framing effect) and are neither transitive nor continuous (See
Kahneman, Slovic and Lichtenstein works). Unless these tests have been proved
to have been faked or incomplete or wrong in any given sense, the very
Popperian methodology our colleagues are so fond of should have led them to
delete this key assumption about behavioural patterns, with the obvious
consequence that there is no "natural" or "exact" laws in
economics. It is a well-known fact that very few of them, Kenneth
Arrow being the best known exception, are willing to accept this conclusion.
If they were, they would understand why realism is a central requirement in
economics. Therefore, it is
important for non-autistic economists to understand that it is not just
"more realism" that they must fight for, but also, and more
importantly, for a methodological posture revolving around the requirement
for realism. This last point raises another problem, the all too
frequent confusion about the level of abstraction in economics. Having worked
for many years on the Soviet, then the Russian, economy, maybe I have
developed a certain sense on that matter. Going back to James K. Galbraith’s
contribution, to discuss the market for low wage labor as a specific case of
the labor market is not the same thing as to discuss the market for low wage
labor in a given country, at a given time and with the given set of
institutions governing relationships between the internal market and the
world economy. By the same token, when we discuss the labor market, the
word ”market” does not have the same meaning as when we use it in a
discussion about relative pros and cons of market and central planning. Another extremely dangerous way to do
economics is illustrated when Robert Solow, in his Le Monde article, switches
from an highly abstract level to directly operational issues as if concepts
were part of real life. Spinoza wrote that the concept “dog” does not bark,
but nevertheless, if we understand how to use concepts, “dog” is still useful
for understanding life where dogs bark and even bite. Realism is not to be
confused with reality. The fight against the misuse of axiomatism in
economics (and generally speaking in the social sciences) is not an
anti-theoretical turn but a different approach to theoretical thinking. Having gone so far in support to the post-autistic
approach I must confess some unease about the widespread use of the term
“pluralism” in the PAE-Newsletter. First, it is to be understood that I
support teaching various theoretical approaches in economics if done in a
critical way. Second, I also support the idea that a scientific debate must
be done in an open-minded way and particularly when it concerns academic and
professional journals. But, and this is no small caveat, no scientific debate
is possible without agreed rules about what is correct and what is not. No
geographer would teach her/his student the flat Earth theory except as an
historical example of false geographical understanding of the world. No
historian of the Soviet Union would now teach her/his students the 30's
without talking about the 1932/33 starvation, whatever explanation he/she
could give about it. Anyone pretending in the scientific community that Earth
is flat and Soviet peasants were rich and happy in 1933 would be called a
faker or a lunatic. So there are bounds to pluralism. Reclaiming pluralism makes sense if and only if we develop
a scientific methodology consistent with the requirement of realism. I
understand that among post-autistic economists some still believe that the
Popperian approach is worth some consideration. I have my doubts about it if
only because the logical contradiction embedded in Popper's falsification
theory, when applied to social sciences, as demonstrated by the late
Professor Quine. It's not the place here to fully address this issue but my
position is that without understanding all the realist methodological
implications, pluralism could become perverse, that is the simple addition of
conflicting points of view without any means to critically assess them, or
even the understanding that some are not compatible with others. Otherwise we
will run into big trouble, not least the one of theoretical inconsistency,
and offer a weak flank for autistic colleagues to attack. The so-called
patchwork effect I am afraid of is already pervasive among mainstream
economists. I would not spare PAE-Newsletter readers this short
account of something that happened to me years ago at the IMF. After quite a
long meeting with people of the Europe-II department, and a very heated
debate about what was really happening in Russia, the chairman of the
department wanted to make a point. He then very solemnly declared:
"Remember, inflation is,
every time and everywhere, a macroeconomic phenomenon, as demonstrated
by von Hayek". Oooops! You could believe in standard macroeconomics, or
believe in Hayek, but the fact is that the whole Hayekian understanding of
inflation is grounded on a microeconomic process. You can't mix both. To go back to the issue of individual preference and how
economists are to write their model specifications, how could we accept
context-independent, transitive and continuous preference functions when we
know it's wrong? Daniel Hausman in his 1992 book, The Inexact and Separate
Science of Economics, wrote a full chapter about how mainstream
economists consistently refuse to acknowledge the preference reversals
phenomenon, and called that dogmatism. If autism is to be described as an
acceptance of fantasy rather than reality and a withdrawal from reality, then
nothing can better describe some of our colleagues’ behaviour about the
theory of individual preference. But to separate ourselves from autistic
economists we then have to elaborate specific assessment rules as to organize
scientific pluralism. This leads me to a short comment
about the French PAE curriculum, a comment I made at the October 2000 meeting
in Paris. It's very important to re-introduce History of Economic Thought
into the core curriculum. It would be even better if backed by the
introduction of lectures in methodology and epistemology. If economics
belongs to the social sciences, then students, who are to be taught economics,
deserve to learn what is the methodology and epistemology of social sciences.
I know that students usually don't like methodology and epistemology, mostly
because philosophy as taught in secondary school is either boring or has
become a complete ideological playground. What's more, the jump to the level
of abstraction needed to understand what methodology and epistemology are
about is distinctively at odds with the now fashionable posture where
teachers and professors are supposed to explain anything from the
pupil/student's direct experience point of view. This fallacy now dominates
pedagogical practice in French education. Still, I believe that if we could
cut by a half the time devoted to math in the curriculum and to substitute a
similar amount of time to methodology and epistemology, everybody would be
better off. |
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