Edible Economics

The world of food and cooking can impart some insightful lessons to budding economists.

The author, who grew up in South Korea, chose to study economics in the United Kingdom, which at that time had a diverse academic environment. However, the field of economics has since become more homogenized around the concepts of free market, neoclassical theory. Meanwhile, the opposite has happened within the United Kingdom’s food and restaurant culture: In the 1980s, the food there seemed exceptionally bland to a South Korean used to strong flavors – especially to his home country’s staple, garlic – but now major cities have some of the best restaurants in the world, and they promote adventurous food trends.

Economic education, like food consumption, is best when it consists of a varied diet, with different influences complementing one another. With both food and economics, it is important to check and understand the provenance of the ingredients in a recipe and the economic inputs to theories – that is, the assumptions and claimed facts that support them. Like the best cooks, good economists have the confidence and imagination to defy convention...