MY IDEA SPOT - THE ECONOMICS - AND THE ACADEMIA NEED TO RE-ENGINEER THE SCIENCE AND ARTS OF ECONOMICS !! -sudhanshu

MY IDEA SPOT -

THE ECONOMICS - AND THE ACADEMIA

NEED TO RE-ENGINEER THE SCIENCE AND ARTS OF ECONOMICS !!

How aptly I remember Economist – GORDON WINSTON – who was addressed as – THE ECONOMIST OF HIGHER EDUCATION – before writing today what I am going to write just now –

ECONOMICS SHOULD BE INFUSED WITH THE STUDIES OF HUMANITIES !!!!

In the early 1980s, economist Gordon Winston proudly presented his newly published book on the treatment of time in economics to the legendary economist Joan Robinson. Professor Robinson was notorious for her cantankerous nature, and Gordon waited anxiously for several weeks until Joan suddenly walked into his office, tossed the book on his desk, and declared “Winston, this is the kind of book that is a lot more fun to write than to read.”

Stories are a mainstay of the humanities, but not of economics. After teaching and writing together, we have become convinced that infusing humanistic approaches and sensibilities into economics would make its models more realistic, its predictions more accurate, and its policies more effective and more just.

Sometimes I wonder or rather it’s my dream to write a practical book on Economics – And again I wonder How ??? I often think that a book should be written doing first what is done at the end when the book is published. How good it would be if you could publish a book after reading the various reviews, getting feedback from dozens of book talks, and considering the comments generated by book-related op-eds and essays? I wish one could do so.

Well, it’s never too late to write your Dream !

Economics I believe is a more important discipline than ever, its deficiencies are both glaring and more obvious as the necessity of the subject. On the positive side, its analytical rigor, its focus on trade-offs and efficiency, and its policies aimed at improving lives make it an unusually influential field. And in a world where “alternative facts” increasingly masquerade as real ones, and many deny that “facts” exist at all, the statistical tools of economics serve as a welcome antidote to sophism and political rhetoric.

But, boy, is economics full of itself. I hope it was not so ............. Economics should fuse with other disciplines of Humanities.

I read a survey of American professors who found that fewer than half of economists believed they had something to learn from other fields. Seventy-nine percent of psychology professors and 73 percent of sociologists thought that an interdisciplinary approach made sense; 42 percent of economists endorsed that view.

That might surprise some. Isn’t it the case that economists regularly look to other disciplines for their topics of study? Sure. But citation and similar data indicate that economists all too seldom engage with those fields in a serious way. Most economic models of human behavior disregard psychology, studies of the cycle of poverty ignore sociology and anthropology, and analyses of the past bypass historians. It’s as if other disciplines have great questions, but economics, which alone is rigorous, has all the answers. In it not so ........... but it is not real or true. With its interdisciplinary handicap – Economics doesn’t look REAL !!!!

Just have a look at the reality – the recent reality -

We can see the arrogance of Economics with its Economists by the history of its predictions and policies. The history of Economics is a long record of disappointment which seems to occasion no caution. Economists with their Economics failed to anticipate the dot.com bubble, the Great Recession, the long-term slowdown in labor productivity growth, the surprisingly sluggish nature of the last decade’s recovery, the surging U.S. stock market following the election of President Trump, and the increase in employment in the United Kingdom after the Brexit vote. One may suppose that economists have been chastened. Not that we can see. When you know some math and you have the ear of politicians and business leaders, it is hard to be humbled. Economists, no less than the rest of us, do what Jane Austen’s novels all warn us against: they let their “pride and prejudice” block perception of contrary evidence and their own limitations.

I sometimes think – Economics should preserve the best of economics while making itself more and more less insular, more humble, and more effective !!

I wonder – how I think so. And we don’t mean just incorporating the ideas of the qualitative social sciences; we also mean reaching out to an area of study that seems especially distant—great literature.

Economic insights alone are insufficient when one considers how to foster economic growth in diverse cultures, the moral questions raised when universities pursue self-interest at the expense of their students, or deeply personal issues concerning health care, marriage, and families. In their passion for mathematically based explanations, economists struggle in at least three areas:

1. accounting for culture,

2. using narrative explanation, and

3. addressing ethical issues that cannot be reduced to economic categories.

We should understand people as cultural beings. Life is a very big story telling - one must tell stories about anything and everything. Human lives do not unfold in a predictable fashion the way Mars orbits the sun. Unlike algebra and Newtonian mechanics, life displays “narrativeness”: it requires explanation in terms of stories. And the best appreciation of narrative, and of how different eras shape people of various inclinations, can be found in the great realist novels, which should be considered not just a literary form, but also a distinct way of understanding the social world. Although the events that novels describe are fictional, their shape, sequence, and ramifications often offer the most accurate account we have of how lives unfold. And what they teach about right and wrong is invaluable. There is no better source of ethical insight than the novels of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Henry James, and many amongst Indian literature Tagore, Mulk Raj Anandaand, Nayantara Sehgal, and the new ones Amitabh Ghosh, Upamanyu Chatterjee and plenty other great realists. Their stories distill the complexity of ethical questions that are too important to be entrusted to an overarching theory—questions that call for good judgment. And judgment, by its very nature, cannot be formalized. Moreover, reading literature and identifying with characters involves extensive practice in empathy, placing oneself in another’s shoes. If one has not identified with Anna Karenina, one has not really read Anna Karenina.

When you read a novel or for that matter any classic literature – you open up with many dimensions of real life. This helps you to understand the context of the situation, place and people.

- You live the world from the perspective of a different social class, gender, religion, culture, sexual orientation, moral understanding, or other categories that define and differentiate human experience.

- In such reading you live the story of life vicariously, - not only this – you have an assessment of the feelings, emotions and the consequent action taken by the characters of the novels.

You acquire the wisdom to appreciate actual people in all their complexity.

Understanding real people is at least as important in economics as in any other discipline.

If you don’t understand what motivates human beings, how can you possibly predict how they will act?

Sure, you can simply assume that individuals act rationally and in their own self-interest.

If you read Adam Smith carefully – which I have done I realized - even the founder of modern economics, , considered and rejected that notion. I would advise all economists in order to fully understand his seminal The Wealth of Nations, one must also read his complementary volume, not so popular but a must read - The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where Smith explicitly denied that human behaviour could be adequately described in terms of people’s “rational choice” to maximize their individual utility. Not only do people often behave irrationally but foolishly even more foolishly; People’s care for others is an “original passion” that is not reducible to selfish concerns. One needs a subtle appreciation for particulars, the sort of sensitivity that was dramatized a half century after Smith’s moral treatise by Jane Austen and her successors.

If that is so – Why has Classical education been abandoned instead of integrating in in a sensible way to current professional education ???

Does this explain the declines and irrelevance of MBAs and Economists globally ....... !!!!!

Why is the study of Humanities in decline?

University enrollments and majors in these fields continue to plummet, and their professors feel besieged.

As normally happens blame the academic tastes of students. So fault the students—Students – All they care for is money ! I read somewhere - Twitter has reduced their attention span to that of a pithed frog. Educators are understandably confused and skeptical of explanations for declining markets that blame the students bad taste. Which is not exactly true !

After all who develops the taste – I suppose – The Educators !!

Academic planners and Educators should realize the importance of Classical Education !!

People should have a belief in the greatness of Literature !!

I feel so bad when I hear - From academia - Shakespeare, Milton, and Tolstoy are no more important, why invest the considerable effort to read them?

From Students - Paradise Lost is difficult; War and Peace is long.

I see today that globally students globally leave secondary schools without having any grasp of what reading great works entails.

I have seen places where Literature is being taught - The exams test knowledge of facts about literature, not actually understanding it. The whole teaching sounds like – that if you were tested on your grasp of mathematics by being asked to give the birth years of the great mathematicians. Instead of really reading, students are taught to hunt for symbols, to judge writers according to current values, or to treat masterpieces as mere documents of their times. And these approaches are commonly repeated at the college level.

Examining the current scenario, it seems clear, that something has gone astray.

Since Literature is Difficult –

Abandon the Literature and make them memorize instead the messages !!

Only mediocre literature can be read that way.

Stories have been reduced to simple messages.

I can cite some example which I read somewhere – where stories have been reduced to messages !!

Love your neighbor (A Tale of Two Cities);

Help the unfortunate (Les Misérables);

Child abuse is wrong (Jane Eyre and David Copperfield);

Do not kill old ladies, even really mean ones (Crime and Punishment);

First impressions can be misleading (Pride and Prejudice);

Don’t give in to jealousy (Othello);

Obsessions can be dangerous (Moby Dick);

Stop moping and do something! (Hamlet); Isn’t life glorious?

(Doctor Zhivago); Eat, drink, and be merry, since tomorrow you may be legitimate (Tom Jones);

So sue me! (Bleak House);

There’s no fool like an old fool (King Lear).

If you can’t provide a compelling reason why brief summaries will not do, and why it is important to read a great work attentively, then you have not really taught, or learned, literature. When we argue that economics can derive depth and breadth from novels, we approach great literature as a source of wisdom and insight that cannot be obtained, or obtained so well, elsewhere.

Let’s see some current contextual examples of REAL LIFE ECONOMICS -

In 2014 when the United States placed sanctions on Russia after Russian troops seized Crimea from Ukraine, how did President Putin respond? By doubling down and imposing self-sanctions, banning imports of many agricultural products from the United States and Europe. Economists might be baffled by such an “irrational” act. But read the classics of Russian literature and you are not surprised. Westerners typically assume the state exists to serve individuals; Russians, often enough, the reverse. People come and go, but Russia remains. Far from unwelcome, sacrifice and suffering for the nation can justify lives and be deliberately embraced.

THE BREXIT VOTE was the real shock ..... !!!!! Weren’t many of those voters actually voting against their own economic self-interest? That is heresy for economists! Maybe some of these voters were, as Dostoevsky wrote so brilliantly in Notes from Underground, deliberately acting against their self-interest as economists understand it. Perhaps in the face of condescension and the assumption that they are a known quantity, they acted to assert - what is most precious and most important—that is, our personality, our individuality. And perhaps pundits and professors should get out more—meet those who are angry about feeling disenfranchised or looked down upon, listen to what they actually say, and read their stories as they, not their cultural betters, would tell them. In retrospect, the clues were there.

And of all the areas of economic policy that have disappointed, it is probably the limited impact of well-meaning investments in the developing world that has been most painful.

Let’s see hard core economics - Getting the prices right, by reducing government subsidies for key consumer items might make sense in the classroom, but the real world demands nuance and cultural understanding. Can you reasonably expect that what works on one continent or in one country can simply be transferred to another? Before you dictate policy, gain an appreciation of a nation’s attitudes, politics, religion, and history—all that a nation’s literature is best able to provide, its insights.

Literature of the place gives direction to policy improvements: enrolling more low-income students in elite colleges and universities. Despite various outreach efforts and substantial reductions in price, “undermatching” persists, where talented students of limited means attend open enrollment or modestly selective schools rather than the prestigious institutions eager to enroll them. But put yourself in the place of those students, worried that they have the wrong accent, beliefs, and manners to thrive at an Ivy League school or at Oxbridge. And one way to do exactly that is to read any number of great novels where young men and women from the provinces try to succeed in the big city. From Balzac to Dickens to Chekhov, the reader inhabits the space of someone struggling to fit within “proper” society. Matchmaking, whether by friends, grandparents, or college admissions officers, is not easy, as Jane Austen’s Emma Woodhouse repeatedly discovers. Class differences run deep, and matchmakers are apt to assume their own preferences in trying to ensure a happy pairing. Once they appreciate that, schools might develop more programs that allow students from disadvantaged backgrounds to feel that an elite school doesn’t just want them there for its own sake but is willing to make them feel at home. Providing need-based financial aid helps, but there is much more to belonging than affordability.

I don’t say by taking literature seriously we will transform the field of economics? Of course not. But by incorporating - learning from literature, philosophy, and the other humanities, along with history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, religion, and the like, may lead economists to develop more realistic models of human behavior, increase the accuracy of their predictions, recognize that they should not be so sure, and come up with policies that are more effective and more just.

I remember reading in – THE GUARDIAN - the comment of Andrew Haldane, chief economist of the Bank of England, when considering forecasts of a recession made by a wide variety of economic experts following the Brexit vote—as opposed to the employment and investment growth that actually took place—“Out of this crisis, there could be a rebirth of economics.”

Perhaps someday that rebirth of economics will be in extensive and intensive book reading habits of students and professionals in the rich libraries of the world.

HAIL THE GOOD STUDENTS – THE GOOD PROFESSIONALS - VORACIOUS READERS - WITH AN ECLECTIC BENT OF MIND AND VARIED READING- STUDYING TASTES !!

AFTER ALL, - WHAT DO WE HAVE TO LOSE, - IF REALISM EMERGES IN OUR ACADEMICS AND LIFE -INSTEAD OF BANAL THEORIES AND THINKING ..... WE ARE INDULGING IN !!!!!

MUCH LOVE

Sudhanshu