Bruce Bartlett Ignores Inequality

Bruce Bartlett makes a lofty claim (h/t Mark Thoma):

Fortunately for conservatives, the greatest free market economist of all time, Milton Friedman, found an explanation for the Great Depression that let capitalism off the hook. The fundamental problem, he said, was that the Federal Reserve foolishly allowed the money supply to shrink by a third between 1929 and 1933…

By fingering the Fed’s mistakes as the root cause of the Great Depression, Friedman rescued capitalism from blame. Today, I think most economists accept this explanation, although they differ on the appropriate response to the decline in the money supply…

Bringing it back to the Great Recession,

The main differences between today’s crisis and the Great Depression is that the deflationary pressure is less than a third of what it was in the 1930s and policymakers today reacted much more swiftly and more appropriately than they did after 1929.

Okay…but first, policymakers needed a crisis to respond to. Now, what do the Great Depression and Great Recession have in common?

Ah yes, inequality. Correlation does not imply causation; however, there are a number of mechanisms whereby inequality can engender instability in capitalism. So, remind me- how does Friedman’s money-driven explanation remove capitalism from blame?

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Soros’ Big Push

Newsweek (h/t Ezra Klein) reports that George Soros is going to pour $50 million into an economic think tank that will combat free market fundamentalism. The “Institute of New Economic Thinking” will use grants, symposia, and a journal to encourage a wider range of economic thought.

On its face, this idea seems like a good one. There’s been a lot of talk about the broken sociology of the profession, and a lot of those problems are rooted in the chain of money that tends to fund free market economics. Obviously, it would be better if the change could happen from within the academy, more organically, but things like that take time. A “big push” like Soros’ thus seems warranted to encourage more Stiglitz’s, Krugman’s, et al.

Based on Soros’ predilections (he is a capitalist after all), I’m doubting that Polanyi and Marx are going to play heavily in this effort. Hyman Minksy certainly will, according to the article. Soros is a very finance-oriented guy- that’s where he’s made his money, after all. Nevertheless, it would be good if more people were open to concepts of capitalist instability, not just financial instability.

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(Ig)Nobel Reactions

Geoff Hodgson has compiled some reactions (pdf) to the recent Nobel Prize in Economics for RWER. These reactions are from the web forum/message board Economics Job Market Rumors, which is read by grad students, post-docs, et al. in the PhD econ world. Comments on any web forum, especially anonymous, should be taken with a large grain of salt. I wonder, though, to what extent these comments are representative.

Some of them are just misogynistic:

This girl seems to be a political scientist. I dont think she has published original research in any major economics journal…

The fact that most of us have not heard about her says enough about her contributions…

Some are dismissive of her work:

Multidisciplinary?? Other disciplines are all rubblish [sic]. Why let them conteminate [sic] our purity? […]

Economics is superior. Don’t let political science conteminate [sic] us!

And, thankfully, others are corrective:

Seriously, this is a sensible and insightful award to an original and careful researcher whose work is widely cited precisely because it is original. To those of you who have never heard of her: you might start by asking why your lazy micro teachers inflict a narrow range of material on you that typically consists of selected papers from their own back catalog,
the work of their buddies and one or two classics they themselves were forced to swallow in grad school. To those of who complaining that’s she’s never published in your favorite ‘top journal’: yes, despite that shameful handicap she is one of the most cited social scientists around, by economists and non-economists alike. […]

These postings really do show the narrow training of many economists. In fact, economics departments in most universities are highly isolated places in the larger world of social science. To trash a scholar as serious and insightful as Ostrom is a shame.

And, FTW…

What if the commons is actually an important field of study and the fact that most of us never read anything about it during graduate school is something that economic theory lecturers should take into account when formulating their syllabi?

Most of the reactions I’ve read in the blogosphere have been overwhelmingly positive. I know I read that some of U of C were chaffed by the whole thing (Fama was the fav, after all). So, what are others’ experiences; are people in and around economics depts excited about this award? Mad? Reflective?

My hope is that this Nobel leads to the sort of introspection in that last comment. My fear is that the discipline, through various self-selection mechanisms, has been populated with more narrow-minded people (most of whom are probably not sexist), who believe that neoclassical economic theory should always carry the day.

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Midway: Message from the Gyre

Earlier this year Matt had a post about photographer Chris Jordan’s work examining the waste produced by consumerism (check it out here).  Well Chris Jordan is back with a new work titled, “Midway: Message from the Gyre.”  The photo blog world has been buzzing about this work for the past week (as well they should, it’s brilliant), but I think it’s time we consider the economic side.  The series consists of pictures of albatross babies on Midway Atoll that have died from a high plastic intake.  These small bits of plastic are thrown into the ocean and apparently make their way to the middle of the pacific ocean where the birds,

are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young.

Look around the room and consider just how much plastic we consume.  Some of it we’ll recycle.  But if it doesn’t have the right number in that little triangle, or we forget, or it’s just inconvenient, it’ll end up in the garbage with the rest of our waste.  And then we forget about it.  But with the exception of some recently designed plastics, none of the plastics that end up in the garbage are going to biodegrade.  Many will end up the ocean where they may do this:

Regarding truth in these photos, artist Chris Jordan writes,

not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

I know they’re not exactly happy images, but check out the rest of the series at Chris’s website.

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What I’ve Been Reading

Creative mental forces are lacking lately. Intellectual ones, not so much. In the last two weeks I’ve read one very good book and started another.

The first, The Moral Measure of the Economy, is an excellent crash course in applied Catholic Social Teaching, written by Chuck Collins and Mary Wright. For those who are pressed for time and well-versed in CST and how it shapes the way one thinks about the economy, poverty, et al., and I would recommend skimming through up until Chapter 7. It is at this point that the authors talk about alternatives. Their disucssion is both wide-ranging and coherent, covering ideas from community organizing to worker-owned cooperatives.

The second, Economics: Neoclassical versus Marxian, was writtenby Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick at UMass Amherst. These authors are Marxian economists, btu the first third of the book essentially reads like a self-aware intermediate micro textbook. All the basics, from individual utility curves to production functions to AS and AD, are covered. In discussing neoclassical economics, they pull all their punches and choose to merely point out the assumptions one must make to paint a neoclassical world. At times, their portrayal of the resulting worldview even sounds favorable. For instance:

According to neoclassical theory, profit income is due partly to an individual’s personal actions in regard to saving and partly to the productivity of a thing called capital…to criticize and individual for receiving a relatively high profit income is virtually absurd. Are we to cast blame on the inherent productivity of a nonliving thing, capital…? (82).

Of course, I know the book is going to proceed to shred neoclassical theory when it presents the basis of Marxian theory. They’ve already beat the drum of neoclassical economics’ key assumptions (and the exclusion of class as an entry point). They call these assumptions “the governing essences,” which can be boiled down to preferences, production function, and endowments. Indeed, if all of these essences are taken as given as the basis for discussion, who wouldn’t subsequently derive neoclassical theory (assuming, of course, some mathematical ingenuity).

More on this book when I’ve finished, but I like its approach. Don’t just write a polemic that criticizes the consequences of a theory; instead, criticize the assumptions, the “essences”, and the entry points.

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A Vision for Catholic Higher Education

I recently came across a document published by the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in July of 2009 called “Catholic Higher Education and Catholic Social Teaching.” The document offers a vision statement for Catholic Social Teaching (CST) across the curriculum. What struck me was the paragraph on “The Economy” which echoed my concerns and hopes for economics at Notre Dame exactly, copied below with my emphasis added.

Times of economic crisis present an opportunity to rethink the economic models that have dominated the most recent moment of globalization. Yet, in economics and business school curricula, CST is too often relegated to courses on professional ethics. The new economic realities of our time call for a deeper engagement between economics and CST. Catholic universities are envisioned as places where the questions and ideals of CST continue to query the assump­tions of orthodox economic thought and where CST evolves in dialogue with the most rigorous contemporary economic research. Concepts such as the dignity of labor, the common good, the preferential option for the poor, and human soli­darity are essential to forge a more just, merciful, and sustain­able global economy. Students formed in a CST vision and methodology learn that economic responsibility is not reduced to competitiveness and the maximization of profit.

This is exactly my personal concern. The current plan, to dissolve the Economics and Policy Studies Department and spread the professors around the campus or to other universities, will almost certainly sacrifice this vision of Catholic Social Teaching integrated across the economics curriculum. Absolutely, the ECOE professors use econometric tools to teach and research social justice related issues such as poverty and religion. But the classroom and research is lacking in two ways: (1) they lack mention of the assumptions of orthodox economic theory, much less a query rooted in the questions and ideals of CST and (2) they lack discussion of concepts such as dignity of labor, the common good, the option for the poor, and human solidarity.  I become very concerned when these concepts cannot enter the economics classrooms even at Notre Dame.

Although a difficult task, I remain hopeful that a better solution can be forged for economics at Notre Dame. As the document concludes, “By matching determination to conviction, justice can become ever more a reality in our time.” And by the way, Fr. Jenkins sits on the board of the ACCU.

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Nobel Prize in Economics

The Nobel prize committee announced this morning that Elinor Ostrom and Olliver E. Williamson, two Americans, will share this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.  (The New York Times and The Washington Post report on it here and here, respectively).  Now, I’m not an economist, so I won’t try to analyze (or explain) the work itself.  But we all know that the Nobel prize is very political, so I’d like to consider what message is being sent by this prize, or more accurately, what message Notre Dame should take form it.

The Times best summarizes the most important aspects of this year’s recipients, writing of Professor Ostrom (Indiana University),

Her background is in political science, not economics.

Wait, a non-economist just won the economics prize?  This should give us (and Notre Dame) pause to think about whether or not economics really is the isolated field the mainstream department likes to think it is.

To be fair, the administration is only seeking a higher ranking by pursuing a department that looks like its ivy counterparts.  To quote Sean Mallin from the recent Scholastic article (which Matt writes about here),

Notre Dame strives to be like its ‘peer institutions’: Harvard, MIT and Yale, all mainstream.  They are caught up in a game of follow the leader.

So how are mainstream economists at top programs reacting to today’s announcement?  Again, the Times helps us out:

“It is part of the merging of the social sciences,” Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale, said of Monday’s awards. “Economics has been too isolated and these awards today are a sign of the greater enlightenment going around. We were too stuck on efficient markets and it was derailing our thinking.”

Yikes!  That’s quite an admission.  The writing might not be on the wall yet, but the signs are becoming clearer and clearer that the economics world may be thawing to some heterodox ideas.  I’ve always been under the impression that Nobel prizes are pretty prestigious- the type of thing you would want your faculty to bring to your institution.  So maybe the economics program at Notre Dame should look to hire more professors like Elinor Ostrom instead of closing their department.  (Ostrom is the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change at Indiana University.  Sounds like ECOP to me.  Read more of here accomplishments at this IU bio-like page).

Notre Dame has a chance right not to lead its ‘peer’ institutions in the study of economics.  Instead, it’s setting itself up for what may soon be a very backward-looking department.

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Unbiased Estimation of the Usefulness of ECOP

In a recent Scholastic article (written up here by Matt), Professor Nelson Mark from the Department of Economics and Econometrics claims that faculty from the Policy Studies department “haven’t done anything useful since they got their dissertations in the 60s and 70s. They’re out of date and not doing very much.”

Just in case your gut reaction doesn’t tell you that this childish statement is not only crude but also very, very wrong, I thought I would bring in some empirical facts (sorry, no obtuse models from me) about what ECOP faculty have been doing in recent years.

Since 2000:

• Philip Mirowski has written or edited 6 books, published by Cambridge, Harvard, Duke, and University of Chicago Presses (some of the most respected academic publishers in the world, in case you didn’t know), and authored too many articles and book chapters to count (I stopped at 30).

• David Ruccio has written or edited 3 books, published by Routledge and Princeton University Press (again, two top academic publishers), and over 15 articles and book chapters, as well as serving as the editor for the journal Rethinking Marxism.

• Amitava Dutt has written or edited 4 books (with several forthcoming), and over 35 articles and book chapters.

In addition, Martin Wolfson is widely recognized as an expert on financial crises (“out of date,” Mark says…) and Jennifer Warlick, founding director of the Poverty Studies minor, also sits on the board of the Early Child Development Center in South Bend, and has conducted several research projects in the South Bend community (“nothing useful,” Marks says…)

These are just a handful of examples of faculty from ECOP, who are, according to Mark, “not doing much.”  I’ve heard a lot about the maniac pace of academic publishing expected of top scholars these days, but I’d say that several books and articles since 2000 should count as “doing something,” right?

Just for fun, we can compare the ECOP faculty above to Mark, who, since 2000, has published 1 book and 10 journal articles.  And if fun’s not your thing, you can try reading some of Mark’s recent publications.  One, from 2006, is titled “Unbiased Estimation of the Half-Life to PPP Convergence in Panel Data.”  Nothing screams “useful” to me like half-life to PPP convergence in panel data…

Now, in Mark’s defense, publishing in books and journals might not have been what was talking about – especially since by that metric it would appear that ECOP faculty have been much more productive than he has.  So what did he mean?  We can take the opposite approach and ask what a “useful” professor might look like.  In my opinion, an ideal professor would be a dedicated teacher, be involved in groups or programs across the university, and maybe even do work that has positive impact on the surrounding communities.  Let’s again turn to the facts:

Several faculty from ECOP have won prestigious teaching awards, head up or are affiliated with programs and research institutes across the university (I wrote on this in an earlier post here), and are involved with numerous community research and service programs.  In other words, not only do ECOP faculty publish (a lot of) “useful” work on “useful” topics that are much more “useful” and accessible to students, scholars, and non-academics, but they work ceaselessly towards a better community, both at Notre Dame and outside of it.

So I find it interesting that Nelson Mark can lambaste his colleagues for being “out of date” and useless when many of them are working on vital contemporary issues that are of consequence to more than just the readership of the American Economic Review.  It makes me wonder: If ECOP faculty are publishing more articles in wider venues, doing more research across disciplines, involved in more projects that impact underprivileged communities, and are still winning teaching awards, wouldn’t it be the Econometrics department that appears relatively out-of-date and useless?

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The Homeless Heterodox

The most recent edition of Notre Dame’s Scholastic magazine had an excellent article called “The Homeless Heterodox.” Unfortunately, they do not seem to have an electronic version that I can link to, so here are some highlights:

Fifteen Notre Dame professors will become essentially homeless over the next two years as a result of the impending dissolution of the Department of Economics and Policy Studies… they will be boarding up their department’s office in O’Shaughnessy Hall and deciding where, if anywhere, they fit in at the University.

The article then goes on to give the history of the split and tensions that emerged afterward. About the ranking of the department:

It’s not the case that professors in the Policy Studies Department are neglecting to publish altogether. Policy Studies professor David Ruccio served as editor for the journal Rethinking Marxism for 12 years until this past May. Others publish in journals that deal with topics such as political economy, developmental economics or Keynesian economics. The issue is that external reviewers of the economics department expect professors to publish in more mainstream journals.

Ruccio is also concerned about the implications this move will have for students and the development of a liberal arts education that encompasses a variety of viewpoints. “Non-neoclassical approaches allow students and scholars to see the flaws in such a system and to devise alternative economic and social arrangements – to help whose who are the victims of economics and social injustices,” he says.

And the article ends with the response:

Economics and Econometrics professor William Evans, however, says he disagrees with the characterization of his department as “crazy, imperialist, crackpot classical economists” who are members of an “anti-reality, anti-social justice club.” Instead, he argues for the compatibility of social justice issues with research-based neoclassical economics. Evans points to several colleagues in the Economics and Econometrics department involved in projects concerning the economics of religion, the incentives for raising foster children, and measuring poverty under extreme circumstances.

Professor Nelson Mark … goes a step further, asserting that the current scandal is not about social justice or the place of alternative views, but of academic quality. “The faculty [in the Policy Department] are way behind the frontier and haven’t done anything useful since they got their dissertations in the 60s and 70s. They’re out of date and not doing very much,” he says.

Mark ultimately looks to the market as a deciding factor for the dissolution of the Policy Department and as a recommendation for its former professors.

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Slim Thug Feels the Recession

Wyatt Cenac from the Daily Show explores the effects of the economic crisis on rappers and related industries in this video segment.

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