Why Do We Need Heterodox Economics Departments?

A comrade writes:

Economics is too important to leave it to the mainstream. Economic ideas and economists are very powerful at shaping and influencing the societies in which we live. We, heterodox economists, are a minority and we need our voice be heard. I’m afraid that the radicalism of “I don’t care the mainstream, I do my own thing” is the most conservative strategy. It leaves us as college professors teaching mainstream stuff with a heterodox twist but without any significant influence in the real world. Please, don’t take this wrong. I respect and admire those who like teaching at colleges as a way of life. I’m just saying that as a collective output is a suicide. Our battle is at research universities, central banks, finance ministries, international institutions and think tanks, where the presence of mainstream economist is overwhelming. We need to challenge and persuade them and for that we need to know their theories and methods.

I disagree.

Of course we don”t want to be cloistered. But there are many possible channels by which our work can reach public policy, social movements and the larger world. Shifting the mainstream of economics is only one possible channel and not, in my judgment, the strongest or most reliable one.

To take a personal example: I recently agreed to do some research work for a couple of state-level minimum-wage campaigns,giving them numbers on the distribution of workers who would be covered by the bills by industry and firm size and the profitability of the major low-wage sectors in those states. The people organizing the campaigns are now using those numbers for position papers, talking points for canvassing, op-eds, etc. I even went down to Maryland a couple weeks ago to testify before the legislature.

Of course you need some basic knowledge of econometrics and the relevant literature to do this kind of work. But do you need the kind of knowledge you’d need to be a cutting-edge labor economist? No, obviously not; I’m not a labor economist of any sort. And yet, I would argue, this kind of direct work with practical political campaigns/organizations is at least as likely — more likely, IMO — to produce concrete policy changes and to shift the public debate, than an effort to master the techniques of mainstream labor economics, publish sufficiently on the minimum wage to move the consensus of the profession, and then count on the “official” representatives of the profession to pass the message on to policymakers. Fundamentally, I don’t agree that our battle is at research universities, central banks, etc. Our jobs may be at those places. But our battle is with people engaged in practical political work and organizing. This isn’t (just) a moral stand; I think the implicit assumption that the consensus of the economics profession is first shaped by the quality of the arguments made on various sides, and then transmitted to politics, is not applicable to the real world. If you want to contribute to political change, you need to be part of a political project; winning debates within the economics profession doesn’t help. The recent history of macroeconomics shows that clearly, no?

There’s a second point. The idea that we should be orienting our training around learning to persuade the mainstream assumes that “we” already know what we want to persuade them of. But that’s not the case. On most of the big questions, we don’t have any consensus on what the right answers are, even if we’re confident they’re not what’s taught in most programs. And the project of developing an alternative economics is very different from the project of persuading people of an alternative economics. The second would require talking — and having the tools to talk — with others. But the first requires primarily talking among ourselves. And the first has to come first. Economics is hard! And Marxist, post-Keynesian, feminist, institutionalist economics is just as hard as mainstream economics. (Albeit in different ways — less math, more fieldwork & history.) Unless we — meaning we heterodox/radical economists — are systematically building on each others’ work, there will never be an alternative view to persuade the mainstream of. Which means there needs to be spaces for conversations within radical economics, where we can critique and develop our own approaches, and for getting the training necessary to take part in those conversations.

All of us tend to exaggerate our own intellectual autonomy. (It’s a legacy of the Enlightenment.) We think we’re rational beings, who know what we want and choose the best tools to get it. But , means and ends don’t always separate so cleanly. You say you want a prestigious position only in order to have a better platform from which to advance progressive ideas, but soon enough the means becomes the ends. (I’ve seen it happen!) There can’t be left ideas without a sociological left — without a group of people who feel some objective connection with each other, have shared experiences and interests, share a common identity. Because ideas will accomodate to the situation of the person who holds them. (Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral.) We all think, no not me, but yes us too. If there aren’t at least a few settings in which specifically radical economics is professionally rewarded, we shouldn’t take it for granted that it will continue to exist.

The Lucas Critique: A Critique

Old-fashioned economic models (multiplier-accelerator models of the business cycle, for example) operate in historical time: outcomes in one period determine decisions in the next period. That is, agents are backward-looking. The Lucas critique is that this assumes that people cannot predict what will happen in the future. The analyst on the other hand can derive later outcomes from earlier ones (or we would not be able to tell a causal story), so why can’t the agents in the model?
Lucas says this is an unacceptable contradiction, and resolves it by attributing to the agents the model used by the analyst. (Interestingly some Post Keynesians (e.g. Shackle) seem to see the same contradiction but they resolve it the other way, and take the inability to predict the future attributed to the agents in the model as a fundamental feature of the universe, so applicable to the analyst too.) But is the idea of predictable but unpredicted outcomes such an unacceptable contradiction?

One reason to say no is that the idea that agents must know as much as analyst rests on a sociological foundation – that institutions are such as to foster knowledge of the best estimate of future outcomes. This need not be the case. For example, consider the owners of an asset that has recently appreciated in value, where there is some doubt about whether the appreciation is transitory or permanent, or whether further appreciation should be expected. Those asset-owners who have a convincing story of why further appreciation is likely will be most successful at selling at a higher price, and so will increase their weight in the market. And to have a convincing story you should yourself be convinced by it – this is true both logically and psychologically. Similarly with various arm’s-length relationships that must be periodically renewed – the most accurate promises are not necessarily the most likely to bring success. Or on the other side, classes and organizations to maintain their coherence need their members to hold certain beliefs. This could take the deep form of ideology of various kinds, or the simple form of the practical requirements of organizational decision-making implying a limited set of inputs. The other reason comes if you carry the Lucas critique through to its logical conclusion. Those who accept rational expectations also use the method of comparative statics, where transitions from one equilibrium to another is the result of “shocks”. One set of technologies, tastes, endowments, policies, etc. yields equilibrium A. Then a shock changes those parameters, and now there’s equilibrium B. Joan Robinson objected to this procedure on grounds that it ignored dynamics of transition from A to B, but there is another problem. Evidently B is a possible future of A. The analyst knows this. So why don’t the inhabitants of A? Unless the shock is literally divine intervention, presumably its probability can be affected by the their actions, so doesn’t the analysis of A have to take that into account? Or, even if the shock is indeed an act of God, it’s possibility must be known – since it is known to the analyst – and so it must affect decisions made in A. But in that case the effects of the shock can be hedged and nothing happens as a result of the shock; there is no longer two equilibria, just one. So we either have agents with perfect knowledge of everything and no knowledge of shocks, which must literally be divine interventions; or we can have only a single equilibrium which nothing can change; or we can become nihilists like Shackle; or we can reject the Lucas critique and accept that there are regularities in economic behavior that are not anticipated by the actors involved.