Occupy Your Mind

Jason Chang, 12/13/11

As a graduate of a so-called "heterodox" economics school and witness to the Asian economic crisis of 1997, the Occupy Wall Street movement resonates with me in many ways.

Author of Adam's Fallacy and my former professor Duncan Foley once explained that "the role of heterodoxy in this long-standing division of intellectual labor is to make mainstream economists as uncomfortable as possible." So I was glad to see Harvard econ students challenge the dominant canon of modern economics in the recent walkout. 

But what about professors, the key agents responsible for the transfer of knowledge to students? I was excited to see this week that Harvard professor and author of One Economics, Many Recipes Dani Rodrik had joined the call demanding new economics that values context rather than rule of thumb. In his most recent op-ed, Rodrik mentions something that isn't well understood outside of the economics profession:

“by now any bright graduate student, by choosing his assumptions….carefully, can produce a consistent model yielding just about any policy recommendation he favored at the start.” 

Given this malleability in economics, why does one school of thought still dominate over others? As Professor Rodrik explains, economic models are subject to many assumptions and biases, most of which are "deemed to be inappropriate (or dangerous) for the general public." This has a critical impact on the content of undergrad courses and public addresses by leading economists, turning the unaware into free-market apostles without fully comprehending why first. He goes on further to say that "[economists] skip over the real-world complications and nuances, well recognized as they are in the discipline. It is as if introductory physics courses assumed a world without gravity, because everything becomes so much simpler that way."
 

In my mind, this continuous armchair response of economics in spite of evidence on the ground is at the core of the OWS movement. To be sure, the heterodox school of thought, while providing an alternative, is still an evolving "big tent" of multiple disciplines and occasionally subject to internal disputes. Nonetheless, its greatest strength comes from the fact that it has no leaders per se, intentionally choosing diversity over dominance. Any of this sound familiar? Mic check?

Zuccotti Park may be a shell of its former self, but the occupation continues in our classrooms and our minds. Stay tuned.