Quelle Horreur

So I took this Foreign Policy article by Stefan Theil on the sorry state of economics education in Germany and France pretty hard.

Was this the “economics” education that was actually “social studies” education? Or was that the German textbook only?

Why are they so surprised that the French don’t want to lower their standard of living to an American level?
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We should deplore politicised psuedoscience all the more when it so directly threatens the material well-being of a country’s people.

p=. : The Economist & Sons :

p=. Your Specialists in Moreinsorrows

p=. Wholesale and Retail

I’m really sorry to have to keep on returning to this point over and over again, but I completely agree with this statement:

‘We rightly deplore the politicisation of the curriculum when it comes to “intelligent design” crackpottery. We should deplore politicised psuedoscience [sic] all the more when it so directly threatens the material well-being of a country’s people.’

But the question is: who are the politicised pseudo-scientists? The people who question the ‘truths’ of ‘neo-classical’ economics? Or the people who propose them?

The fact remains: if the ‘truths’ of ‘traditional’ ‘neo-classical’ economics really are as empirically justified and rationally plausible as those of Newtonian physics then it is those who challenge them who are the pseudo-scientists.

If not, then the contrary.

(Incidentally the Economist blogger’s grasp of empirical reality should be indicated by the fact that s/he doesn’t know how to spell ‘pseudoscience ‘)

Indeed, but by The Economist’s logic there should be an oversupply of those types in the U.S., while in France anyone with those biases should have them indoctrinated away.

I think I’m missing something here. Why would people with the anti-entrepreneur bias prized by US departments of economics have them indoctrinated out by anti-entrepreneur French education?

Since the initiation of Free Exchange blog, the Economist has really been turning into a parody of itself.

On an unrelated subject with a similar theme, I’ve often thought the Eiffel Tower should be considered one of the great wonders of the world because it was built by people speaking French.

“How long should this girder be?”
“Four twenty and six!”

“Was this the “economics” education that was actually “social studies” education? Or was that the German textbook only?”

I agree with Grand Moff Texan – the shocked economists’ assumption that “economics” is synonymous with relevant social science is as telling as anything else in this debate.

Upon reading the Economist piece, all I have to say is that they appear to believe that anything other than breathless Randian cheerleading for capitalism is “pseudoscience”.

To update Whedon’s Firefly: “My days of not taking the Economist seriously are definitely reaching a middle”.

There are a lot of French traders on Wall Street and in the City – all trained in French schools (especially the Polytechnique).

“There are a lot of French traders on Wall Street and in the City – all trained in French schools (especially the Polytechnique).”

Quite so.

“The worldwide volume of foreign exchange trading is enormous, and it has ballooned in recent years. In April 1989 the average total value of foreign exchange trading was close to $600 billion per day, of which $184 billion were traded in London, $115 billion in New York, and $111 billion in Tokyo. Fifteen years later, in April 2004, the daily global value of foreign exchange trading had jumped to around $1.9 trillion, of which $753 billion were traded daily in London, $461 billion in New York, and $199 billion in Tokyo.”
Krugman and Obstfeld: International Economics (2006) p.311

“The City of London is globalisation in action. It is, first of all, thoroughly international, handling more of the world’s deals in over-the-counter derivatives, global foreign equities, eurobonds and foreign exchange than any other financial centre (see chart 3). Second, its firms specialise in innovative, high-value-added products. Third, the City is living proof that clusters work in the way that economists claim. Capital can move like mercury. The main reason why international finance has made London its home is that everyone is there, making it easier to do complicated deals and to trade quickly in large quantities. The City offers a cluster of talent—financial whizz-kids, lawyers and due-diligence accountants—that is second to none, and self-renewing. It helps that English is a near-universal second language and that London’s time zone makes it possible to trade in a (long) working day with both Asia and America. Regulation is mainly deft but not lax, and the taxman takes a hospitable view of foreigners’ personal earnings.”
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8582323

Believe it or not, the economics departments of most US universities are not bastions of left-wing thought. The curriculum runs from Smith to Ricardo to Hayek to Friedmann, and you can achieve a Master’s degree in the subject without ever reading Marx, Keynes, or Galbraith, except in bits spoon-fed by the professor for the purpose of discrediting them, along with counter-arguments to be used if the student ever finds himself in a debate with the enemy.

Re: wider social sciences, if France and Germany are so much crapper than the anglophone countries in this regard, then why do so many sociology courses revolve around French and German thinkers?

Believe it or not, the economics departments of most US universities are not bastions of left-wing thought. The curriculum runs from Smith to Ricardo to Hayek to Friedmann.

See, that’s not my impression at all. I think it’s exceedingly unlikely you would read Smith, Ricardo or Hayek in most American economics programs, any more than you would read the Principia in a physics program. If you put together a list of the 20 most frequently assigned writers in economics graduate programs, I doubt there’d be even one who wasn’t an academic economist born since 1900.