The 40th Australian Conference of Economists in Canberra this year came to an end with the release of an opinion survey of what local economists thought about leading public policy issues but also the composition of the ideal economics degree.
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It had been organised and conducted over the web some months before, having been commissioned by the Economic Society of Australia, the peak representative group for the economic profession in this country. It met with 530 respondents: 37 per cent of them were from university, 33 per cent were drawn from the public sector and the remaining 25 per cent were private sector economists.
The age distribution of the poll showed that the largest cohort of economists (43.6 per cent) fell within the 25 to 44 age bracket and the second largest between the ages of 45 and 64 (41.8 per cent).
The great Chicago economist George Stigler once said that the study of bourgeois economics made one politically conservative. This was not, however, borne out in the polling. For instance, 75 per cent of respondents agreed with the key preposition that a substantial increase in public spending is an appropriate response to a recession and also agreed in the same proportion that an easier monetary policy be deployed in bad times.
Australian economists seem to have rediscovered their Keynesian faith, although in truth only those on the periphery of the profession would contest this proposition.
The proposal that a carbon tax or a price-based mechanism, as opposed to direct regulation, was the more appropriate means of cutting greenhouse gas emissions met with a towering response of 89 per cent. Tony Abbott , cry your heart out!
When economists were asked whether Australian economics degrees “should contain more subjects that place economics in a broader context, such as economic history, history of economic thought and political economy" 32 per cent of those surveyed strongly agreed while another 44 per cent agreed. The aggregate of 75.7 per cent was the second highest assent to any proposition in the poll of more than 40 questions.
With such a popular motion towards broadening the syllabus in economic degrees, one has to ask why it is then that economic history, history of economic ideas and heterodox economics are now barely taught in economics degrees here.
Research undertaken by Tim Thornton of La Trobe University on the university economics curriculum has categorically shown that what is taught has actually narrowed, not broadened, over the last three decades.
My own speciality, the history of economic thought, is taught in only a few Australian universities and barely at all at postgraduate level.
Yet the history of economic thought is an integral part of economics. It gets worse, however. When it comes to the hiring preferences of university economic departments, having an interest or research orientation in any of these three areas would be to a candidate’s disadvantage. Better to be a model builder or would-be theorist.
There is, in short, a great disconnect between contrite announcements that economists have indeed forgotten the lessons of the past and the wisdom of the great masters and actually doing anything about it.
In North America, Bradford DeLong has picked up on this, noting that there have been no substantive changes in hiring Keynesians or heterodox academics to American universities. It is the same here with any attempt to do so snuffed out at executive level.
While the economic profession has been humbled after the global financial crisis and the great recession, it is unlikely to spell changes to its hiring patterns.
Actions do speak loudly than words.
