Last week to Paris, for the annual conference of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, a think-tank focused on encouraging fresh theory and practice in the field. [OR OTHER EXPLANATION PLS]There was much discussion of curriculum reform in university economics teaching. The debate centred on a revised introductory economics syllabus devised by Wendy Carlin of University College London and a group of academic collaborators. The new curriculum is being tested now. [CUT- WILL HYPERLINK -The project was described by Ferdinando Guigliano in last Saturday’s paper.]
There was agreement among participants that reform is needed (although people who attend a conference on new economic thinking are likely to think that). Macroeconomic theory, our understanding of how economists experience booms, busts, inflation and growth, was found wanting in the global financial crisis. But professional orthodoxy remained largely unchanged. Robert Lucas, doyen of modern macroeconomic theory, decried critics for their ignorance, and explained that the economic consequences of unpredicted events were unpredictable. But this is no response at all. Finance theory was also shown to be deficient.
Student dissatisfaction is evidently and understandably widespread. A group from the University of Manchester has taken the lead in Britain, but the protest movement has extended around the world. These young people assert that their professors fail to engage with the topics — economic development, financial instability, inequality — that attracted them to the subject, and that too much of their time is spent on trivial exercises in elementary mathematics.