Perspectives for Post-Keynesian Economics

The paper reviews and assesses the negative and positive advice which has been offered by various fellow economists to heterodox economists in general, and Post-Keynesian economists in particular, in light of changes that have occurred within neoclassical economics and in light of the rising hegemony of mainstream economics in economics departments. Various strategies are considered, among which is more engagement with orthodox dissenters, but it is concluded that the majority of heterodox economists ought instead to engage more with other heterodox economists and possibly other social sciences, developing and expanding their own agenda around real-world problems.     

The Wrong Type of Pluralism: Toward a Transdisciplinary Social Science

When heterodox economists talk of pluralism they are generally talking about pluralism within the economics profession—they are asking: how can we have a more pluralistic economics profession? This paper argues that another, perhaps more useful, way to think of pluralism and economics is from the perspective of all the social sciences. When considered in reference to the social science profession rather than in reference to the economics profession, the amount of pluralism increases significantly, since different social sciences follow quite different methodologies. But looking at pluralism from the social science perspective reveals a different type of pluralism problem in social science. While there may be plenty of pluralism within social science as a whole, there is a serious question about whether it is appropriately distributed. This paper argues that heterodox economists' agenda should be a greater blending of all the social science departments. It summarizes proposals to do so on both the undergraduate level and graduate level, and explains why supporting variations of these proposals would be a strategy that would further the objectives of most heterodox economists more than would their current strategy of pushing for more pluralism in economics.     

Heterodox Economics and its Critics

Heterodox economics has its critics. Most of the criticisms are friendly comments and analysis directed towards improving heterodox economic theory. However, the critics and their criticisms that are the concern of this article are the ones that challenge the existence of heterodox economic theory and the community of heterodox economists as manifested through their graduate programs, conferences, journals and identity. These critics observe that the academic status quo in economics, as manifested in its department and journal rankings, rules of academic engagement, and its institutions and organizations, favor mainstream economics and that it is unlikely to change in the future. Consequently, they argue that heterodox economists can survive only if they become more like mainstream economists. With focus on assimilation, the critics direct their criticisms towards the social characteristics of the heterodox community and to the personal characteristics of heterodox economists. This article is a response to the critics.     

Brands of Economics and the Trojan Horse of Pluralism

This paper examines the current status and prospects of heterodox approaches to economics in relation to the problem of marketing ideas to groups of potential users who see the world in very different ways. It draws lessons from the changing status of behavioural economics and highlights the marketing problems that arise between heterodox economists whose perspectives overlap only partially. Its principal message is that the best hope for heterodox economics may lie in taking a less openly combative approach than hitherto when trying to win over mainstream economists and instead using strategies of stealth based on the empirical advantages of pluralistic applied research methods.     

Pluralism,the Lucas Critique,and the Integration of Macroeconomics and Microeconomics

Mainstream macroeconomics has pursued ‘micro founded’ models based on the explicit optimization by representative agents. The result has been a long and wasteful detour. But elements of the Lucas critique are relevant, also for heterodox economists. Challenging common heterodox views on microeconomics and formalization, this paper argues that (i) economic models should not be based purely on empirically observed regularities, (ii) heterodox economists must be able to tell an integrated story about goal-oriented micro behavior in a specific macro environment, and (iii) relatively simple analytical models have an essential role to play.     

Teaching Heterodox Economics: Introduction to the Special Issue

This introduction to the special issue of the Forum for Social Economics on teaching heterodox economics provides an overview of the papers in this volume. The papers demonstrate that heterodox economists are particularly gifted at explaining the dynamics of the real world economy; therefore, heterodox economics instruction often specializes in, and benefits from, immersing students into real world situations. Heterodox economists push pedagogic boundaries by directly confronting students with real-world data and situations. In the process, students achieve a rich understanding of the world as it is and not as a hypothetical myth. The overview of papers is followed by suggestions for future work on teaching heterodox economics, and acknowledgments of those who made this special issue possible.     

A Guide to Paradigmatic Self-Marginalization: Lessons for Post-Keynesian Economists

While many heterodox economists hope that the recent financial crisis will lead to paradigmatic change in economics, we argue that path-dependent processes and institutional factors within the economic community hinder such a change. Focusing on the citation behavior of economists in heterodox journals in general and in Post-Keynesian journals in particular, we discuss structural reasons—connected to positive feedback mechanisms within the institutional framework of the economics discipline—for the marginalization of heterodox economic thought.     

Kydland and Prescott's Nobel Prize: the methodology of time consistency and real business cycle models

This paper provides a non-technical and illustrated introduction to the econometric contributions of the 2003 Nobel Prize winners, Robert Engle and Clive Granger, with a special emphasis on their implications for heterodox economists.     

Social Surplus Approach and Heterodox Economics

Given the emphasis on social provisioning in heterodox economics, two of its central theoretical organizing principles are the concepts of the total social product and the social surplus. This appears to link heterodox economics to the social surplus approach associated with the classical economists and currently with Sraffian economists. However, heterodox economics connects agency with the social surplus and the social product, which the Sraffians reject as they take the level and composition of the social product as given. Therefore the different theoretical approach regarding the social surplus taken in heterodox economics may generate a different but similar way of theorizing about a capitalist economy. To explore this difference is the aim of the article.     

Orthodox Core–Heterodox Periphery? Contrasting Citation Networks of Economics Departments in Vienna

ABSTRACT

The notion of an ‘orthodox core–heterodox periphery’ structure and the extent of interdisciplinary links have been widely discussed, and partially investigated bibliometrically, within economic discourse. We extend this research by applying tools from social network analysis to citation data of three economics departments located in Vienna, two mainstream and one non-mainstream, to assess their relative citation patterns. We show that both mainstream economics departments follow the asserted core–periphery pattern and have a mono-disciplinary research focus, while the citation network of the non-mainstream department has a polycentric structure and is both more heterodox and interdisciplinary. These findings suggest that discussions about the future of heterodox economics should pay more attention to the organizational level and seek allies from other disciplines.     

Tyranny of kindness: Dismantling the welfare system to end poverty in America Theresa Funiciello

The Comment on Wrenn’s article “What is Heterodox Economics?” suggests that the inability of heterodox economists to define their field arises from an as yet unrecognized and different metaphysical foundation than that of orthodox economics.     

Economic Scholarship at Elite Liberal Arts Colleges: A Citation Analysis with Rankings

Although prominent economists at elite universities produce the most influential scholarship, economists at the nation's leading liberal arts colleges make significant contributions. The author measures the influence of 439 economists employed at the 50 top liberal arts colleges and ranks departments and individuals on the basis of citations. The author discovered a hierarchy with a small number of departments whose faculty produce cited scholarship, and a small number of influential economists employed at liberal arts colleges. The determinants of citations are estimated. Greater experience and more publications but not lower teaching loads are correlated with more citations.     

A Case Study of Pluralism in Economics: The Heterodox Glass Ceiling in Italy

ABSTRACT

Quantitative measures of supposed scientific ‘quality’ (or ‘impact’) based on bibliometric indicators are used as the primary or exclusive tools of research evaluation in a growing number of countries. The negative impact of this method of evaluation on pluralism in economic teaching and research has been documented in Italy, France, Australia and the United Kingdom. We provide new evidence for Italy by investigating the CVs and publications of all candidates for the ‘national scientific qualification’, which is needed to access all tenured Italian academic positions. With respect to past evidence, we focus on the homologation of research topics and methods as well as the delegitimization of particular publication outlets. Our analysis has relevant implications internationally. First, research evaluation aimed at identifying ‘excellence’ often boils down to (as in the case of Italy) the adoption of rankings of supposedly top journals, which systematically discriminate against heterodox journals. Second, the legitimacy of academic research published in the form of books and book chapters must be reclaimed. Third, heterodox economists risk discrimination not so much because of their methods or policy recommendations, but because of the topics and research fields they investigate.     

Comment on “What is Heterodox Economics? Conversations with Historians of Economic Thought”

The Comment on Wrenn’s article “What is Heterodox Economics?” suggests that the inability of heterodox economists to define their field arises from an as yet unrecognized and different metaphysical foundation than that of orthodox economics.     

Evaluating The Research Output Of Australian Universities' Economics Departments

This paper presents measures of the research output of Australian economics departments. Our study covers the 640 academic staff at rank Lecturer and above in the 27 Australian universities with economics departments containing eight or more staff in April 2002. We construct publication measures based on journal articles, which can be compared with weighted publication measures, and citation measures, which can be compared with the publication measures. Our aim is to identify the robustness of rankings to the choice of method, as well as to highlight differences in focus of departments' research output. A striking feature of our measures is that the majority of economists in Australian university departments have done no research that has been published in a fairly long list of refereed journals over the last dozen years. They may publish in other outlets, but in any event their work is rarely cited. Thus, average research output is low because many academic economists in Australia do not view research as part of their job or, at least, suffer no penalty from failing to produce substantive evidence of research activity.     

Transforming economics into what? Heterodox economics and critical realism

The volume under review consists of comments on critical realismby heterodox economists. This paper addresses a number of themesfrom the book, e.g., history and reflexivity, sometimes expandingon the authors' comments on critical realism, other times respondingto them on behalf of critical realists. It considers the goalsof critical realism and ask to what extent the book furthersthem. It concludes that the high level of abstraction at whichcritical realism operates encourages those commenting on itto do so at a similarly high level of abstraction. As it stands,critical realism and the contributions to the book are too divorcedfrom the concerns of concrete economic theorising to be of greatuse to practising heterodox economists.     

Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success

Abstract

This essay is a comment on“The Citation Impact of Feminist Economics”by Frances Woolley, which appeared in Feminist Economics, Vol. 11, No. 3, November 2005.

This contribution comments on Frances Woolley's recent Feminist Economics article, “The Citation Impact of Feminist Economics.” It points to two avenues through which Woolley's article could have better illuminated the extent of Feminist Economics' scholarly relationship with the communities of both heterodox and mainstream economists: first, she omits several important heterodox economic journals in her study, and second, she could have offered a more critical evaluation of mainstream journals and economists relative to Feminist Economics and feminist economists. This paper uses citation data drawn from ten heterodox and ten mainstream journals to identify and build on these gaps.     

The Incoherent Emperor: A Heterodox Critique of Neoclassical Microeconomic Theory

It is somewhat common for heterodox economists to come to the defense of neoclassical microeconomic theory. This is due to many reasons, but perhaps the commonest one is ignorance. It seems that most heterodox economists are not aware of the many critiques or that as a collective they completely undermine neoclassical theory. The objective of the article is to dispel ignorance by using the existing criticisms to delineate a systematic critique of the core components of neoclassical microeconomic theory: the supply and demand explanation of the price mechanism and its application to competitive markets. The critique starts by examining the choices, preferences, utility functions, and demand curves, followed by examining production, costs, factor input demand functions and partial equilibrium, and ending with perfect competition and the supply curve. In the conclusion, the implications of the results will be extended to the firm and imperfectly competitive markets, and then the question whether general equilibrium theory or game theory can save neoclassical microeconomic theory.     

Financial and Capital Account Liberalization,Financial Development and Economic Development: A Review of Some Recent Contributions

Abstract

This article presents a review of some recent contributions on the relation between global finance and economic development in emerging economies. It first, stresses the growing consensus among economists on the financial instability that financial and capital account liberalization can possibly cause in emerging economies. It then outlines and compares two alternative strategies to tame such instability. The comparison is between the “good-institutions need-to-come-first” approach put forward by some mainstream economists, and the request for a deeper reform of the existing monetary system advocated by heterodox economists.     

Averting crisis? Assessing measures to manage financial integration in emerging economies

The Asian crisis provides heterodox economists with the opportunityto investigate counterfactually whether the financial policiesthey have proposed would have averted the crisis. The paperargues that neo-liberal financial integration introduces distinctrisks to emerging economies—currency, flight, fragility,contagion and sovereignty risks. The paper presents the financialpolicies endorsed by the heterodoxy—transactions taxes,trip wires and/or speed bumps, convertibility restrictions,the Chilean model and a publicly managed mutual fund. The paperconsiders whether these policies mitigate risks, and whetherthey could have prevented the Asian crisis (and the transmissionthereof). The paper concludes with policies to avert futurecrises.