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[pf] more comment: a revolution in economics (Keith Rankin's column)
by David MacClement
02 December 2000 19:22 UTC

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http://web.archive.org/web/20030424011232/http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0011/S00175.htm
  is:

Thursday, 30 November 2000, 9:42 am, +1300
Column: Keith Rankin

Keith Rankin: Autistic Economics?
30 November 2000

 In June this year, a group of economics students at
one of France's leading tertiary institutes, the 
*École Normale Supérieure*, revolted. They were objecting 
to the obsession with abstract mathematical modelling that
dominates economics education worldwide. The newspaper 
*Le Monde* gave some publicity to their cause, and a
surprising number of economics teachers supported them.

  The outcome of the revolt was the formation of the
post-autistic economics (PAE) network ( http://web.archive.org/web/20030424011232/http://www.paecon.net/ ) 
which, in a few months, has spread into a number of other 
countries, including Australia and Canada.

  One of the most important initiatives are 
students' and teachers' petitions to reform the teaching 
of economics. The 'Ivy League' (American) version 
( http://web.archive.org/web/20030424011232/http://www.geocities.com/ivy_league_student_petition/ )
of the students' petition is the most interesting, because
it has a useful preamble to the standard form. The teachers'
petition (eg the Australian version:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030424011232/http://www.powerup.com.au/~richleon/Teachers.htm )
goes into much more detail about the pedagogical crisis
that the hegemony of neoclassical economics has brought
about. (In Australia, the PAE movement links back to a huge
schism in the 1980s that took place within the Economics
Department of the University of Sydney, and that led to the
creation of a separate Department of Political Economy which
set out to teach a radical programme of 
alternative economics.)

  Before examining what is autistic - or
allegedly autistic - about the  dominant economic paradigm
(neoclassical economics) I should note that the use of
'autism' as a metaphor might be regarded as inappropriate by
many of  those whose lives are touched by autism, or who are
researchers of autism.

  Autism is a condition that appears
in (mainly) boys from about 18 months of age. It seems to
involve an alternative 'wiring' of the brain, and has a
number of symptoms, not all of which are necessary to give a
diagnosis of autism. Thus persons suffering from autism vary
both in the symptoms that they display and in the extent to
which their alternative mental traits are disabling. Autism
- what could be called a variation of the embryology of the 
mind - is one of the most baffling (and under-researched)
mysteries of medical science.

  The particular autistic symptom that the PAE movement has 
latched onto is: "disengagement from reality". The charge is 
that (neoclassical) economics as a discipline is unduly detached
from the real world. Rather than engage in the pursuit of
open-minded enquiry that other sciences and social sciences 
purport to do, economics withdraws into an abstract world
defined by its own assumptions. In doing so, it has adopted
the language of mathematics (to the exclusion of English,
French etc), thereby making its indulgences meaningless 
(though threatening) to persons who can not or will not
adopt its linguistic norms. In other words, economics, it
is alleged, suffers from  scientism ("the uncritical
application of scientific or quasi- scientific methods to
inappropriate fields of study or investigation" according
to my Collins Dictionary), otherwise known as formalism,
apriorism or rationalism. Indeed, it is long accepted
within the profession that economics suffers from "physics-envy";
 meaning envy of nineteenth century Newtonian physics.

  The corollary of 'disengagement' in persons with
autism is the absence of socialisation, and in many cases,
the absence of language which is the *sine qua non* of
socialisation. Hence autistic traits of neoclassical 
economics include its individualism, its glorification of
the private domain at the expense of the public domain, and
its preference to use a private kind of language that has
the effect of stifling rather than facilitating 
conversation. (The promotion of economics as a
"conversation" is in fact one of the important reactions in
the 1990s to the excessive formalism of 1980s' economics.)

  Autistic persons can be intelligent, but that
intelligence is usually obsessive and extremely narrow in
its focus. Thus the metaphor of autism helps us to gain an
insight into the culture that emerged in, for example, the
New Zealand Treasury in the 1980s. The use of language that
created  barriers, the single-mindedness, the lack of any
concept of a *society* that was distinct from an
economy, the refusal of the Treasury itself to countenance
competition (while advocating competition for everyone else)
and the concept of TINA ('there is no alternative') all
suggest that ideological neoliberalism is as autistic as
the formalist mathematical economic models that pass as
research. Autistic children, like closed-minded technocrats,
can be control freaks.

  It is important to note that the
new movement is /post/-autistic rather than
anti-autistic. At least the teachers' petition emphasises
the need for economics (and therefore economics education)
to move on rather than to turn on itself. Mathematical
model-making is a useful intellectual discipline. But it's
only a small part of the scientific study of economies and
economic phenomena. The problem is that 
*a priori*-mathematical-economics has a way of suppressing 
enquiry into the ways that economies actually work (and have 
actually worked in the past). The other problem is that those 
who derive all their truths from premises rather than from 
observations understand policy in utopian terms. For them,
good policy involves radical re-engineering of humankind,
so that our behavior conforms with the rationalist premises
of 'economic man'.

  Post-autistic economics suggests the opposite. 
That economics should emphasise the way the world
does work, and not how it might work in a private-property
free-market utopia. In this context, policymaking depends 
critically on knowledge gleaned from observation rather than
from abstraction.

  Having expressed my sympathy for the
goals of the PAE, I do have reservations about it. First,
autism is still too much of a taboo subject to enable it to 
become an effective metaphor for a protest movement. Second,
there is a danger to overreacting to the failings of
mathematical economics. Abstract mathematical economics, in
its place, has a huge amount to offer humankind, as indeed
does pure mathematics.

  It is proper that the PAE movement
should focus on a broad-based and critical economics
education rather than on the rights and wrongs of 
neoclassical economics. The most immediate problem is that
if advanced economics education is turning off everyone
except a few people who come into economics with right-wing
political agendas, then we end up with a society that is
unable to debate economic issues, and unable to contest
polical *fait accompli*. Without widespread economic
literacy, policymaking becomes vulnerable to the
machinations of control freaks.

  I would like to finish with a quote from two of 
my colleagues at Unitec (Andrew Codling and 
Jacqueline Rowarth), from their recent (24 November) 
_Herald_ article: 
( http://web.archive.org/web/20030424011232/http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=161644 )
"Being educated is a lot more than just knowing things."

  Codling and Rowarth conclude: "It is to be
hoped that the [TEAC] commission's recommendations take
account of the concern about the narrow base of learning 
that our students have. A revamping of our system, founded
on the basic  disciplines with inter-disciplinary,
problem-based teaching, would give our students a broad
education. This would allow us to promote our graduates and 
eventually our country to the world as an educated one, with
all that that implies."


 © 2000 Keith Rankin