“Social Economics” as an Alternative

Daniel Little has a post in which he writes about how heterodoxy can be useful above and beyond the current economic crisis. He writes, We’re ultimately not as interested in the formalisms of market equilibrium as we are in an analysis of the institutions that define the context of economic activity. We want to know [...]

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“Misleading Indicators”

In this week’s America (h/t Felipe), Chuck Wilber, a professor emeritus in economics at ND, offers his take on how economists missed the “Great Recession.” In it, he directs much of his criticism at the pedagogy of economics. Economics is a lot like theology, despite the former’s claim to be a science. Theology uses self-evident [...]

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Moore on Moore

No subliminal messaging there, just some pun fun. Michael Moore’s movie, Capitalism, A Love Story, is premiering in theaters everywhere tomorrow. Naomi Klein interviewed him for The Nation, and one exchange struck me. NK: All right. Let’s talk about the film some more. I saw you on Leno, and I was struck that one of [...]

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Corporate Personhood

The New York Times published an editorial on Tuesday on a case currently before the United States Supreme Court that, on its face is, a fairly narrow campaign finance case, involving whether Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, had the right to air a slashing movie about Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic primary season. In addition [...]

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Ghilarducci on the Closing of ECOP

A former ECOP faculty member gives her two cents: Economists need to be broader, more self-critical, deeply knowledgeable about economic institutions. This is why it’s dumbfounding that the University of Notre Dame created an economics department filled — by intent! — of only neoclassical economists and banned their Ph.D. economists who are policy-oriented and non-orthodox [...]

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“The Punchbags of Notre Dame”

At first I thought that blog post title was a slight at our football team, which is underachieving for its fourth straight season. Alas, it is actually Daniel at Crooked Timber’s rather scathing take on ECOP’s closing. Do you find yourself considering the financial crisis and thinking “well, neoclassical economists have certainly come through this [...]

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More on that GDP Report

I meant to write about this report upon its release last week, but recent events have gotten in the way (and apparently the New York Times is a week late as well). In the article, Stiglitz states the over-arching problem as well as anyone could: If you don’t measure the right thing, you don’t do [...]

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Shameless Self-Promotion Dept: Petition Update

As of this afternoon, at 2:40 EST, our petition is at 434 signatures and is continuing to grow. In fact, it is number fourt on iPetitions’ “Today’s top petitions” list (behind Michelle Bachman’s anti-ACORN petition- let’s step it up!) Keep on sending it to anyone you know who is interested- the external faculty response has been [...]

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Another Petition: Revitalizing Economics After the Crash

If our petition is micro-level, this new petition, which quotes Paul Krugman’s important article, is macro-level. Signatories of this plea support the following words by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman: “Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the [...]

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A Petition to Save Heterodox Economics at Notre Dame

The group of students and alumni responsible for this blog, Open Economics ND, has launched a petition seeking to save and strengthn the Department of Economics and Policy Studies at Notre Dame, which has recently been handed a death sentence. Signing this petition will ensure that the administration cannot close the department with impunity. The [...]

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