Economics Profession

Following a successful inaugural Meeting of Young Minds in 2024, the Second annual Meeting of Young Minds on 17 – 19 February 2025 is geared to be an exciting and engaging gathering of future leaders in the field of economics.

Challenges And Emerging Perspectives

Steven Herrmann, Jungian psychoanalyst and author of the books, William James and C. G. Jung and of William Everson: The Shaman’s Call, among others, engages in a wide-ranging conversation about finding one’s calling, the poet William Everson, and the importance of dreams.

On the passing away of Edward J. Kane

Perry Mehrling’s new book traces the rise of the dollar through the life and career of influential economist Charles Kindleberger

How a bleak Christian theology influenced the development of the dismal science

On the passing away of Victoria Chick

On the passing away of Luigi Pasinetti

“School choice” aimed to block the choice of equal, integrated education for Black families

“School choice” aimed to block the choice of equal, integrated education for Black families

A low agreement between bibliometrics and peer review at the level of individual article indicates that metrics should not replace peer review at the level of individual article.

On the occasion of the ASSA 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting (Jan. 3-5), Peter Bofinger presents a “10 Best of” Mankiw list

No one person or perspective holds the key to solving economic problems, says Jay Pocklington of the Institute for New Economic Thinking

New INET research shows once again that it’s large firms and the 1%—not the “median voter”—who drive U.S. policy

Mainstream economics ignores historical and structural factors by design

Economists have gone to great lengths to write humans out of economics, pushing self-interest and generally providing two choices—faith in markets or the state.

How Penrosian Learning Confronts the Neoclassical Fallacy

To get beyond the neoclassical fallacy, economists have to stop relying on constrained-optimization methodology

The AEA and the Crisis of Expertise

A critique of Mankiw’s Macroeconomics

Economists make what we do seem complicated, says Ha-Joon Chang. It’s not.

New research shows how citation metrics create perverse incentives for corruption in economics

Wade Hands argues that empiricism without theory is insufficient

The New York Times’ Binyamin Appelbaum explains the role Democratic presidents, from Kennedy to Obama, in moving economic policy to the right

An update from INET’s Young Scholars Initiative

Economics needs to better incorporate other social sciences

Economists like to say they’re immune from ideological influence. Our research shows the opposite.

Progressive movements can and should push for pluralism in economics

The Chicago School has long used bankrupt assumptions to strangle antitrust policy

The Chicago School has long used bankrupt assumptions to strangle antitrust policy.

The idea that businesses are run to maximize profits for shareholders is just plain wrong, says William Lazonick

By promoting unrealisitc models, economists have become part of problem rather than the solution

Dani Rodrik says that when ideas become conventional wisdom, we are blind to their limitations

Excellence and Conformity in Economics: how to set the incentives straight

INET talks to Jayati Ghosh and Marina Della Giusta

Economists should stop pretending to be scientists and go back to the core of the discipline—as a field of inquiry and way of thinking

As young scholars, we have formulated a new plan for fostering diversity in both identity and scholarly thinking in economics—preconditions for academic rigor.

INET talks to Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, Claudia Goldin, and Maria Cristina Marcuzzo

The field of economics is aggressively sexist and biased against new and unconventional ideas. Revelations about gender and ethnic discrimination show the need to reorient the whole system toward more freedom, respect, openness, and pluralism. But how?

For women discussing economics, it’s still easier to be seen than heard

In this paper we comparatively explore three claims concerning the disciplinary character of economics by means of citation analysis.

The economist had to learn moral philosophy before anything else—an underpinning that’s still helpful for today’s students

In the face of  laissez-faire capitalism at home and resurgent nationalism across the globe, INET offers an innovative look at the causes of—and solutions for—the problems that ail a fissuring world economy.

The renowned feminist economist discusses the importance of heterodoxy, radicalism, and social justice to the discipline

Rob Johnson kicks off INET’s “Reawakening” conference with his take on how economists can win back the trust of a world that has rejected experts

The YSI Economics of Innovation Working Group in partnership with the Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology is hosting a YSI Conference on “Innovation, Institutions and Governance”.

Mason doesn’t think teaching contending economic theories is effective, and sees the objective of introductory economics courses as teaching students basic tools to understand economic terminology and standard relationship between cause and effect.

McCloskey discusses her career, critiques of economics, and offers advice for young economists.

Workshop of the YSI Africa Working Group 

“The humility to accept that economic propositions cannot be universal would save us from self-defeating arrogance.” Economist Amit Bhaduri adds his perspective to our Experts on Trial discussion.

In a recent interview at the INET offices in New York, Anwar Shaikh provided a background to the work and his life in this quest.

In the age of Adam Smith, an economics that masqueraded as natural science and excluded the human condition actually suited the interests of the landed and the wealthy

Explore your curiosity in economics in an open and critical community.

As part of our “Experts on Trial Series”, Antonella Palumbo argues for stripping away ‘scientific’ shibboleths that mask social and political choices

As part of our ongoing symposium “Experts on Trial”, Professor Sheila Dow argues that if voters have grown contemptuous of economists’ expertise, that’s because economics has been misrepresented as a technical subject separate from politics and moral judgments

From physicists to engineers to meds to plumbers: thoughts on Esther Duflo’s ASSA 2017 lecture on rediscovering the last art of economics

The prominence of the debate over ‘reswitching’ has obscured the importance of Piero Sraffa’s profound contribution to economics. It’s time to revisit and build on that body of work

Students in Europe have created an important resource for those seeking alternative curricular materials

Joe Earle, co-founder of The Post-Crash Economics Society, member of Rethinking Economics and co-author of the Econocracy, explains why his group is trying to democratize economics as a conversation and a policy–making process.

Is Market Capitalism simply an accident of certain factors that came together in the 19th and 20th centuries? Does the innovation of economics require a new economics of innovation? Is the study of economics deeply affected by the incentive structures faced by economists themselves, necessitating a study of the “economics of economics”?

There is a mix of common-sense opinions, political prejudices, conventional business practice, and pragmatic rules of thumb, supported in an ad hoc, opportunistic way by bits and pieces of economic theory.

On George Akerlof’s “The Market for Lemons”

A major shift is needed in the Econometrics curriculum for both graduate and undergraduate teaching to include modern topics.

Orthodox macroeconomics has become a place where visions die and hopes are banished, for both liberals and conservatives.

This essay critically evaluates the benefits and costs of the dominant methodology in macroeconomics, the DSGE approach. Although the approach has led to great progress in some areas, it has also created biases and blind spots in the profession that hold back our understanding and our ability to govern the macroeconomy. There is great scope for progress in macroeconomics by judiciously pushing the boundaries of some of the methodological restrictions imposed by the DSGE approach.

Marc Lavoie discusses the methodological foundations of heterodox economics, and offers a very different model of money and credit, firms and pricing, consumer theory, effective demand and employment and growth theories.

Tania Singer on the key importance of understanding preferences and behavioral change.

Good incentives are no substitute for good citizens.

The extremely wise Robert Skidelsky has an excellent rant against Anglo-Saxon economics departments

I first came across economics students’ campaigns to revolutionise their education in that bastion of radical thought: the newsroom of the Financial Times.

Among the areas left largely unscathed by the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent never-­‐ending recession, the teaching of economics ranks high.

Hubris might well head the list

This panel covers the teaching of economics at the university level.

In the past three years, students around the world have turned the heat of scrutiny onto our economics departments. Our call is strikingly uniform across our diverse cultures and languages: we want critical debate back in the economics curriculum.

Bill Mitchell presents a coherent analysis of how money is created, how it functions in global exchange rate regimes, and how the mystification of the nature of money has constrained governments, and prevented states from acting in the public interest.

Before reforming economics, we need to reform the discourse.

Robert Skidelsky knocks the scientific halo off mainstream economists’ teaching and research

The financial crisis of 2008, and the subsequent worldwide economic depression and continuing dislocation, have made little to no impression on the way macroeconomics is taught at the university level, from Economics 101 through graduate school. It has been “business as usual’, which (it seems to me) means an almost studious avoidance of any attempt to acquire knowledge of how monetary economies actually work.

When the Curriculum Open-access Resources in Economics (CORE) project launched on 11 November 2013 at Her Majesty’s Treasury in London, we promised that we would be ‘teaching economics as if the last three decades had happened’. The last six months have shown us that this is challenging but we are well on our way to doing it.

Economics has advanced an enormous distance from the Walrasian paradigm and the Neoclassical synthesis. However, undergraduate curriculums continue to heavily favour these views of what economics is and what tools it provides for understanding contemporarypublic problems.

In response to widespread discontent among students, employers, and university teachers, a project to create a new core curriculum for economics was launched at a seminar hosted by HM Treasury today. The CORE curriculum project, funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, convened the meeting, which was attended by academics, policymakers, business leaders, and students from around the world.

“You are now leaving the world as you know it.”

The current economic and financial crisis has given rise to a vigorous debate about the state of economics, and the training which graduate and undergraduates economics students are receiving. Importantly, among those arguing most strongly for a change in the way that young economists are trained are the ultimate employers of these students, in both the private and the public sector. Employers are increasingly complaining that young economists don’t understand how the financial system actually works, and are ill-prepared to think about appropriate policies at a time of crisis.

Friedrich von Hayek described the economist’s task as demonstrating how little we really know about what we imagine we can design

What happens when professionals lose touch with the people they’re supposed to serve?

Ronald Coase, who passed away last week at age 102, spent his academic career swimming against the current.

The degree to which economics is isolated from the ordinary business of life is extraordinary and unfortunate.

Changing the incentives for how economists determine both the content of the subject and their approach to scientific research could increase the range of thinking in the profession

Economic theories are powerful things, to be used and misused. Those who write economic theory and do economic policy need to be aware of the consequences of what they are doing.

In this short interview, Institute co-founder George Soros tackles the question at the heart of the Institute’s mission: What’s wrong with economics and what can we do to change it?

“Four men sat at a table. Raised sixty floors above the city, they did not speak loudly as one speaks from a height in the freedom of air and space; they kept their voices low, as befitted a cellar.”

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many of our policy makers and top economists are still stumbling in the dark.

The recent debate about the reproducibility of the results published by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff offers a showcase for the importance of replication in empirical economics.

So why am I hopeful about the future?

At the heart of economics is a theory of action. It reflects views about how human beings make economic decisions and leads to an analysis of aggregate consequences.

Neoclassical economics has abolished the role of psychology in decision making by assuming that all individuals are rational optimizers with rational expectations about future events.