A New Economics Curriculum For A New Century And A New Economy

This paper has been included in the publication
“The Economics Curriculum: Towards a radical reformulation”
Abstract
The advent of the new global economy and more poignantly the global financial crisis of 2008 has revealed the pedagogical fault lines on the contemporary economic neoclassical landscape. This paper proposes a new model for economic pedagogy and for the professional preparation of future economists. It describes the errors and omissions in the academic training of contemporary economists and suggests specific remedies and solutions towards enhancing the efficacy of the economics curriculum. The process of modernizing the economics curriculum requires building intellectual bridges with the new global economy, enhancing historical content, acknowledging the academic value of interdisciplinarity, embracing academic mentorship, internationalizing the curriculum and redefining the role of quantitative economics.
I totally agree with this paper, exactly as i commented the other paper “Should the history of economic thought be included in undergraduate curricula”, found here as well.
The todays economic theories are not the final answer, I would say. They prooved to be unperfect if not to say wrong (in some way, not in all ways).
From a very high level the conclusion has to be that there are some flaws in todays economic theories.
Not seeing a big crash coming .. is one of the actual flaws.
There are very basic questions open to be answered. For example:
How much is “one unit” of “economy” in our very real world? All of our economy is happening in this very real world. But why can’t we measure this economy by one or another real world unit? The economy is out there – what is the basic unit out there also?
As long you can not give an answer to this very simple question there is no way of discussing any kind of real world growth (which is the main goal at the moment).
And there is a link to the question of the unability of a seeing the crash coming:
As long you define any given economy by a money value in its size – how can you say “overload, overload”?
There is no possible way of a definition of a “limit of growth” as long you define the limit by a monetary value.
… and how would you see an external limit of growth as long as you still looking on printed money and using this for measuring the economy?
The discussion has to be redone, and there must be a better answer out there in the real world.
Thanks for your paper!
Olaf
Dear Olaf
Thank you for taking the time to read my paper. Your supportive comments are much appreciated.
Constantine Passaris.
Indeed. If economics is truly the “science of assumptions”, it should be willing to adapt to changing paradigms. Using the same assumptions that were prevalent in the mid-nineteenth century to guage the health of a 21st century economy is bound to produce fallacious results.
Certainly relying on GDP has run its course, and it was never intended to be used as an indicator of national economic health, but we used it as such anyway, to our detriment. Shifiting over to a system of full cost accounting would be a positive step forward.
Dear John
Thank you for taking the time to read my paper. Your comments are much appreciated.
Constantine Passaris.