New School Economic Review ? What is Economics?

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by Karthik Raghavan on April 5, 2011

It?s a new year for NSER and we have a new team coming in with many ambitious plans and a desire to not just match expectations but to surpass them and raise the benchmark. Let us start with an introduction of the new team:

We have two Chief Editors, Karthik Raghavan and Brandt Weathers, and three Associate Editors, Jacob Assa, Will Kenton and Noe Wiener.

Karthik studied Civil Engineering and Construction Management in India before joining the economics program at NSSR as a Masters student. His interests lie in understanding the complexities involved in developing sustainability solutions that are themselves sustainable. Having had no prior formal exposure to economics, he finds the philosophy of economics an absolutely fascinating area of study.

Brandt is a Masters student in economics at NSSR with an interest in economic history, political economy and anything that feels like a comparative advantage with heart. He schooled in Arizona but grew up in Texas and will be one of the two primary bloggers for NSER from this team.

Jacob is a Ph.D. student in economics at NSSR as well as a Statistician at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. His interests include political economy, labor economics, economic development and the history of economic thought. He recently completed his M.A. in economics at NSSR with a mentored research paper on pension policies in the OECD.

Will is a first year Masters student in economics at NSSR. His areas of interest include the history of economics, the sociology of economics, and urban economics. Before coming to NSSR he earned a Ph D. in English from NYU where he studied Early Modern Politics and political history, the history of rhetoric, and aesthetics. He will be the other primary blogger for NSER from this team.

Noe comes from Switzerland and is a Masters student in economics at NSSR. His interests include the economics of labor and migration, political economy and income distribution, as well as neoliberal policies. He believes that the orthodoxy in economics has all too often been complicit in an extensive project of blame shifting (why do we have unemployment? It?s the unions. Why are the poor so poor? They made bad choices) and thinks it?s high time heterodox economists challenge this paradigm.

Moving on to the good stuff, what is the NSER going to be doing this year? To skip to the punchline, we are going to be spending the whole year asking the question ?What is Economics?? Our biggest goal this year will be to create a space composed primarily by and for students coming from a variety of academic disciplines; a space where they feel comfortable enough to share their own perspective on a field that can be quite intimidating. We believe that a dialogue across disciplines is critical for the evolution of economics as a field of inquiry and towards this end, we will be going beyond papers and will invite contributions in the form of blog posts, book reviews, opinion pieces, essays, investigative journalism, cartoons and even fictional work that highlights or talks about interesting issues centered on the question, ?What is Economics?? Any contributions that we find interesting will go up on the website, and the most interesting and relevant ones, the ones that have the potential to spur off further discussions and debates, we will publish in the journal by the end of this year. We also hope to get the ball rolling on a long term idea to setup a discussion forum where students from around the world can conglomerate to dissect the worldly philosophy. In addition to the above, we are also trying to work out the details on a survey series as part of the next edition of the journal; keep your eye out for updates on this one.

The theme for the year is quite open to interpretation, and the more interesting your argument, the more we like you. For those who need help getting started, find below some questions that came up during our discussions. For those whose fingers are already twitching, we have really opened up the ways in which you can contribute, so take your pick and start writing (or drawing). Looking forward to your contributions,

Karthik

(For the NSER Editorial Team, 2011-12)

Did flawed economic theory contribute to the recent crisis? Are these problems due to an over-emphasis on math? Can these problems be solved by lowering the intensity of math or do we instead need more math? Perhaps it is neither more nor less, but the kind of math that needs to change? Do we need to be more normative about the economic world? Is economics a science or an art? Does economics show the way for the other social sciences to become more scientific and rigorous, or does economics need to borrow a page from the other social sciences? Is the problem in the theoretical approach in the way the math is constructed? Is it just the neo-classical way of thinking that is a problem? Do the other schools, be it Smithian, Ricardian, Malthusian, Neo-Ricardian, Neo-Malthusian, Keynesian, Post-Keynesian, Marxian, Marxist, Veblenian, Schumpetarian, Schumacherian, Gandhian, Alien offer better alternatives? What is a better alternative? Where does ecological economics fit into the grand scheme of things? Are sustainability measures that are being pushed by the economic world sustainable in the ecological world? Are the individual and the collective different? Does bargaining power matter? How does the equation change if all the power that the capitalist has is transferred to the workers? Is the problem with the people behaving irrationally, or is the problem with economics being too rational? Is rationality in the economic world and the real world the same thing? Is economics in general too complex? Is real life too complex for economics to handle? Does the study of human cognition and perception have anything to contribute to economics? Where do things such as culture fit in the economic world? Do we need institutional reforms or do we need more institutions to be created? Has economics as a science kept up with the latest in the natural sciences? Does economics emulate the natural sciences too much? Can economists learn anything useful from evolutionary biologists? Is there an East vs. West divide in the philosophy of economics? Is Westernization of the East happening too slowly, or do we need to look at the possibility of Easternizing the West? Are agricultural, industrial and knowledge economies the only ways in which an economy can be classified, or is there more to it? Does the common man struggling to put food on the table care about economics as a field of study? Where do moral norms and conventions fit in the economic world? What makes a certain profession ?right? and ?wrong? in the economic world and where and who draws the line? Is there a difference between economics and applied economics? What is the role of power in economics? WHAT IS ECONOMICS?

Posted in Blog entries 1 day, 1 hour ago at 14:03. 1 comment

Source: http://newschooljournal.com/2011/04/what-is-economics/

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