Harvard Students stage walk-out on Greg Mankiw

[Beet]

On Nov. 2nd, a group of students in Harvard University Ec10, the introductory economics class taught by Greg Mankiw, staged a walk-out. In an open letter, the students lambasted Greg’s course and his textbook for “espous[ing] a specific – and limited – view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today…..There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory.”
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something is shifting out there, and we ignore it at our peril.
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Right now the general public views the economics profession with a large measure of distrust and in some cases outright contempt. Students are entering the worst job market in well over a generation, without much prospect of improvement.  Many of them have seen their parents’ lives turned upside down by financial troubles.  They face being members of the first generation in American history with a lower standard of living than their parents.

http://ineteconomics.org/blog/inet/robin-wells-we-are-greg-mankiw%E2%80%A6-or-not

[Beet]

So, let us get is straight. The students worked out on one of the world's major neo-Keynesians ))

That's true. They weren't protesting his body of work as an economist, just the curriculum of Harvard's version of 'Econ 101' which sounds like almost the same as taught in any introductory undergraduate econ course across the US.

[Beet]

So, let us get is straight. The students worked out on one of the world's major neo-Keynesians ))

That's true. They weren't protesting his body of work as an economist, just the curriculum of Harvard's version of 'Econ 101' which sounds like almost the same as taught in any introductory undergraduate econ course across the US.

Well, the reason they were not protesting his research is because they knew nothing about it. Nor, it seems, did they know much about the subject matter of the course at hand. It was a protest against modern economics in general: which is a lot easier to sustain if you don't know anything about it.

Oh right, dismiss them as ignoramuses, from your perch as a professor. But they are right that academic economics is taught in a very narrow way. I think what they do know is that what they are being taught does not speak to them, to questions that they are hungry and curious about. That does not seem to me to be a way to attract the brightest into a field that badly needs it, at the age when they are deciding what to do with their life.

[Beet]

Well ag, you win my taciturn friend. Your fellow Ph.D's and professionals occupy all the important posts now in Europe and the populations are acquiescent. I sincerely hope that succeed. If the world doesn't go into a deep depression in the next couple years, and we can get out of this without more than one or two people killed in riots, can we call it a success?

[Beet]

Well ag, you win my taciturn friend. Your fellow Ph.D's and professionals occupy all the important posts now in Europe and the populations are acquiescent. I sincerely hope that succeed. If the world doesn't go into a deep depression in the next couple years, and we can get out of this without more than one or two people killed in riots, can we call it a success?

My fellow Ph.D. doesn't even head the IMF. They've brought in two colleagues to deal w/ the basket cases of Greece and Italy - and it's a big mistake, if you ask me. The decisions to be made are political, not technocratic, and no amount of smarts are going to make them possible in the absence of political support.

Excuse, me. I thought the act of putting them in charge by itself was the ultimate political decision? Unless you can show where they asked for something and the politicians were not obedient?

[Beet]

Excuse, me. I thought the act of putting them in charge by itself was the ultimate political decision? Unless you can show where they asked for something and the politicians were not obedient?

No, it's the avoidande of the political decision. It is the general understanding among the economists, that either euro has to be ditched, or the much greater political and fiscal union has to be achieved. Neither option is even on the table - and the "economists" in question will never even whisper about it, as they have no political capital to implement it. So, it will be a muddle through for a while, at least until the politicians actually decide to shoulder the responsibility. Those poor montis and papademoses are merely sacrificial goats, put where they are to take the blame for everything that's going to happen.

Oh, well in that case, we are in agreement.