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Is It Time for a New Economics Curriculum?
Article

Is It Time for a New Economics Curriculum?

“The Economy,” a new textbook, is designed for the post-neoliberal age.

Nick Romeo
The New Yorker, 2021
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9

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The standard economics curriculum has long been static, but a small group of academics is reimagining how to present the field to younger generations. Journalist Nick Romeo highlights a dynamic new text whose authors’ ambitions are to broaden the perspective on economics by examining the geopolitical and sociological angles that underpin national economies. The new approach would embrace not just data and theories but also social phenomena in a wide-ranging attempt to take on the messy complexity of the dismal science.

Summary

Economic schools of thought are a product of their sociopolitical times.

Economic thought changes over time: Keynesianism prevailed after the Great Depression and World War II, and some questioned economist Paul Samuelson’s approach in the highly charged environment of the Cold War. By the late 1990s, established textbooks touted the efficiency of markets as the superior mechanism for organizing economic activity. 

The failure of the presiding orthodoxy to predict the 2008 financial crash led some in the profession to seek a new approach. Mounting evidence of economic inequality and climate change amplified the calls for a transition.

Two economists’ novel approach to the teaching of economics is gaining traction.

The ...

About the Author

Nick Romeo is a journalist and author whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and the Washington Post. 

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