Alternative Economics

I can't wait for Bryan's The Case Against Education: every semester, my beliefs move in favor of the signaling model and against the human capital model of schooling. This isn't to say there aren't a lot of students who are... MORE

Larry White's The Clash of Economic Ideas pointed me to a wonderful short essay by Joshua Muravchik.  In it, Muravchik makes the most original observation about socialism I've encountered in years: He ["Utopian socialist" Robert Owen] was no obscure crank.... MORE

I was sent a review copy of Debunking Economics, by Australian economics professor Steven Keen. I agree with his view that heterodox economists have something to offer, particularly in the area of macroeconomics. His discussion of a debt bubble and... MORE

Mike Gibson points to a sequence of posts by D.S. Wilson. They start here (with some broken links in the first paragaph--I needed to use Google to follow up on one of them), and proceeds rather slowly for my taste.... MORE

Simon Baron-Cohen said, A systemizer is somebody whose style of thinking is predominantly in terms of understanding things according to rules or laws. You can think of lots of different kinds of systems: mathematical systems (algebra, computer programs), or mechanical... MORE

Michael Blowhard summarizes two books attacking mainstream economics. For most of the "Changing Face" crowd, the field needs some correction, but nothing fundamental. One mathematical-modeling whiz says straight-out that there's nothing wrong with mathematical modeling that better mathematical modeling can't... MORE

William Coleman, author of Economics and its Enemies, gave a lecture on the history of anti-economics. He sees two main sources of hostility to economics. First, The paradoxical truth is that nothing is more unpopular than the pursuit of the... MORE

In this essay, I cited Steven Pinker on the value of teaching economics, but I concluded with doubts as to whether "economic idiotarianism" could be eradicated entirely with education. Consider this story about the movement for alternative economics, including a... MORE