A Brief History of the Post-Autistic Economics Movement

Stage One

The movement began in France in June 2000, when a group of economics students, under the banner “autisme-économie”, published on the web a petition protesting against:

economics’ "uncontrolled use" and treatment of mathematics as "an end in itself", and the resulting "autistic science",
the repressive domination of neoclassical theory and derivative approaches in the curriculum, and
the dogmatic teaching style, which leaves no place for critical and reflective thought.

The autisme-économie petition argued in favor of:

engagement with empirical and concrete economic realities,
prioritizing science over scientism,
a pluralism of approaches adapted to the complexity of economic objects and to the uncertainty surrounding most of the big economic questions, and
their professors initiating reforms to rescue economics from its autistic and socially irresponsible state.

Some economics teachers in France responded with a petition of their own. It supported the students’ demands, added to their analysis, and lamented the cult of scientism into which economics had in the main descended. The professors’ petition also called for the opening of a public debate.

That debate began on the 21^st of June, when the French national newspaper, Le Monde, reported on the students’ petition and interviewed several prominent economists who voiced sympathy for the students’ cause. Other newspapers and magazines followed suit. As the French media, including radio and television, expanded the public debate, fears among students and teachers of persecution if they spoke out diminished and the number of signatories to their petitions increased. This fuelled further media interest. Jack Lang, the French Minister of Education, announced that he regarded the complaints with great seriousness and was setting up a commission to investigate. He put the venerable Jean-Paul Fitoussi, president of the l'Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (OFCE), in charge and instructed him to report within a year.

Stage Two

The movement now entered its second stage, as it sought to capitalize on its official recognition and expand the public debate. And meanwhile the movement became international.

In September 2000 the first issue of the post-autistic economics newsletter appeared. It told of the events in France and encouraged people elsewhere to learn and take heart from them. The response was overwhelming. Teachers and students forwarded the email newsletter on to their colleagues and posted it on a score of web sites. By its second issue in October, the pae newsletter had subscribers in 36 countries.

In the beginning the neoclassical mainstream chose to ignore the PAE Movement. But by autumn it became clear that the call for reform, in France at least, was not about to go away. In October Le Monde carried in one issue three pages of articles on the movement, including an ambiguous interview with Amartya Sen. It was about this time that the traditionalists changed tactics and launched a counterattack. It included a long article by Robert Solow in Le Monde, another by Olivier Blanchard, and the publication of a counter petition – a plea for the status quo.

These mainstream initiatives, however, backfired. Solow’s article came across as imperialistic and condescending, while the petition, which was mainly an MIT affair, left observers shocked by its cynical misrepresentation of the students’ demands. Most of all, however, people on all sides seemed surprised at how feeble were the arguments offered for blocking the reforms proposed by the PAE Movement.

Meanwhile the autisme-économie students, led by Gilles Raveaud, Olivier Vaury and Ioana Marinescu, organized public debates on the issues they had raised in their petition. Through the winter and spring these events took place at universities all over France, some attracting audiences of more than 300. Articles continued to appear in the French press regarding the issues raised by the movement. In February 2001 L’économie politique devoted an entire issue to the debate. In articles and interviews in the French national press, various French economists of note, including Bernard Paulré, Olivier Favereau, Yann Moulier-Boutang, Jean Gadrey, and André Orléan, came out on the side of the students. Over 200 French academic economists signed the petition supporting the students.

In November www.paecon.net was launched to give international direction to the PAE movement, which by now was receiving media attention around the world. At the beginning of December, the French student leaders Gilles Raveaud and Ioana Marinescu appeared in a roundtable “The Future of Economics” at an international conference in Leeds, UK. This event forged important links between the movement in France and emergent initiatives elsewhere. At about the same time James Galbraith flew to Paris to meet with student and academic leaders of the new movement. In January, Galbraith replied to Solow in the fourth issue of the post-autistic economics newsletter.

Olivier Vaury re-designed and re-launched Austisme-économie as a French and English website. Meanwhile other PAE-related websites were springing up in various countries. These included one created in the UK by Oxford University students, which came about following an appearance by Raveaud and Marinescu at the Cambridge Workshop on Realism and Economics.

Throughout the academic year (2000-2001), lobbying of Fitoussi’s commission was intense. It included a special spring visit to Paris by members of the Executive Committee of the International Economics Association. Big guns and bold maneuvers were called for, because it was perceived by both sides that success by the French reformers would, in all likelihood, have effects far beyond the French borders. Concessions won there would in time be demanded in other countries, not just by other students, but also by the thousands of academic economists whose fidelity to the neoclassical mainstream is more survivalist than intellectual.

This broad academic interest was reflected in the rapid evolution of the post-autistic economics newsletter into a journal featuring short, well-written essays and attracting a diverse range of contributors, many of them leading names in the profession. The e-mail journal now has nearly 5000 subscribers, mostly academics, from over 100 countries. Subscriptions are free at www.paecon.net or by clicking here. Recent contributors to the journal include: James Galbraith, Frank Ackerman, André Orléan, Hugh Stretton, Jacques Sapir, Edward Fullbrook, Gilles Raveaud, Deirdre McCloskey, Tony Lawson, Geoff Harcourt, Joseph Halevi, Sheila C. Dow, Kurt Jacobsen, The Cambridge 27, Paul Ormerod, Steve Keen, Grazia Ietto-Gillies, Emmanuelle Biencourt, Le Movement Autisme-economie, Geoffrey Hodgson, Ben Fine, Michael A. Bernstein, Julie A. Nelson, and Jeff Gates. Back issues are archived at the paecon website.

In June “the Cambridge-27”, 27 embattled economics PhD students at the Cambridge University, published their petition “Opening Up Economics”. By “opening up economics” they mean becoming mindful of the limitations of the “competing approaches to understanding economic phenomena”, of “learning their domain of applicability”, and of using “the best methods for the question at hand” rather than “restricting research done in economics to that based on one approach only.” Their petition now has over 500 signatures (the impressive list of signatories is at http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/Camproposal.htm You may sign it and add your name to the list by clicking here. In September a cognate petition appeared, that resulted from a meeting of 75 students, researchers and professors from twenty-two nations who gathered in Kansas City for a week of discussion on the state of economics. A list of this petition’s signatories is maintained at http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/KC.htm . You may sign it by clicking here.

People expecting Fitoussi’s report to be a whitewash were surprised when it was released in September. It proposed enough reforms to win the support of autisme–économie. And enough for Jack Lang, the French Minister of Education, to speak of fundamental reforms which he has promised to carry through.

Fitoussi’s report, L'Enseignement supérieur de l'économie en question, calls for the integration of debate on contemporary economic issues into both the structure and content of university economics courses. It means real debate, not neoclassical opinion presented on its own or with only token alternatives. Such an open environment would preclude the standard practice of keeping the ideological content of neoclassicism hidden from students. This change alone would radically transform economics teaching, with inevitable and incalculable effects to economics itself.

Stage Three

This is where we are now. Economics has not experienced such pressure to change since the 1930s. Then the complaint was its inability to explain the Great Depression and to effect a recovery. It responded by inventing macroeconomics. Today, the indictment is both more general and more serious: economics as taught in universities neither explains contemporary reality nor provides a framework for the critical debate of issues in democratic societies. The PAE Movement is about bringing economists of goodwill together to change that.

Edward Fullbrook

November 21, 2001