Category: Critique of Mainstream Economics

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Critique of Mainstream Economics Decolonizing Economics Heterodox Economics Publications

Standing in the Way of Rigor? Economics’ Meeting with the Decolonizing Agenda (working paper)

I have a new paper out with Surbhi Kesar in the New School Department of Economics’ Working Paper series: Standing in the Way of Rigor? Economics’ Meeting with the Decolonizing Agenda.

The abstract:

This paper critically engages with various aspects of the decolonization movement in economics and its implications for the discipline. We operationalize the insights from this engagement using a survey of 498 economists that explores how faculty across different kinds of departments, disciplines, geographies, and identities perceive the problems of economics teaching, how they think economics pedagogy should be reformed, if at all, and how they relate to decolonial critiques of economics pedagogy. Based on the survey findings, we conclude that the mainstream of the field’s emphasis on technical training and rigor, within a narrow theoretical and methodological framework, likely stands in the way of the very possibility for decolonizing economics, given its strong contrast to key ideas associated with the decolonization agenda, such as positionality, centering power relations, exposing underlying politics of defining theoretical categories, and unpacking the politics of knowledge production. Nonetheless, the survey responses clearly chart out the challenges that the field faces in terms of decolonizing pedagogy, which is a first step towards debate and change.

Categories
Blog Critique of Mainstream Economics Economic Development Methodology

The Washington Counterfactual: don’t believe the Washington Consensus resurrection (blog post)

I wrote a blog post for Developing Economics with Carolina Alves and Daniela Gabor on some of the revisionist takes on the consequences of the Washington Consensus. Check it out.

Categories
Blog Critique of Mainstream Economics Decolonizing Economics Discrimination in Economics

Does economics need to be ‘decolonised’? (blog post)

Happy to contribute to the interesting initiative The Economics Observatory with the blog post “#economicsfest: Does economics need to be ‘decolonised’?” In it, Carolina Alves and I reflect on the two roundtable discussions that D-Econ curated at the Bristol Festival of Economics last year (see here). We discuss historical efforts to decolonise economics, what we mean by the ‘colonisation’ of economics, the impact of colonisation on the discipline, and decolonisation of both teaching and research.

Categories
Critique of Mainstream Economics Economic Development Experimental Economics Publications

New article: Nobel Rebels in Disguise — Assessing the Rise and Rule of the Randomistas

I just published a new article in the Review of Political Economy, “Nobel Rebels in Disguise — Assessing the Rise and Rule of the Randomistas,” which assesses the theoretical and empirical foundations of the use of randomised control trials in Economics, and its impact on policy debates in development economics and in the aid industry.

Continue reading “New article: Nobel Rebels in Disguise — Assessing the Rise and Rule of the Randomistas”
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Critique of Mainstream Economics Dependency theory Economic Development Interviews Podcasts SDGs

In Pursuit of Development (Podcast)

It was great fun to discuss the big questions in development economics with Prof. Dan Banik on his podcast In Pursuit of Development. Listen to it and read more about it here.

Categories
Blog Covid-19 Critique of Mainstream Economics Heterodox Economics

Reclaiming Economics After Covid-19 (new blog post)

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“The pandemic has revealed the poverty of our economic theory. Rupture with the old paradigm is the only route to recovery.”
Read my piece with Carolina Alves on Progressive International’s blog.
Categories
Blog Critique of Mainstream Economics Decolonizing Economics Discrimination in Economics Heterodox Economics INET Teaching

Why Do Economists Have Trouble Understanding Racialized Inequalities? (Blog post)

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I wrote a blog post with Surbhi Kesar for the Institute for New Economic Thinking on the Economics discipline’s lack of capacity to understand racial inequalities, based on survey data.

Categories
Covid-19 Critique of Mainstream Economics Heterodox Economics Publications

Changing the Narrative: Economics After Covid-19 (new article)

I wrote an article on how COVID-19 exposes weaknesses in the dominant Economics narrative, and how heterodox economics offer important alternatives, with Carolina Alves for the Review of Agrarian Studies. Here’s the abstract:

In this ar­ti­cle, we argue that so­ci­eties’ un­pre­pared­ness and in­ad­e­quate re­sponses to the Covid-19 pan­demic ex­pose weak­nesses in the foun­da­tions of the dom­i­nant eco­nomic par­a­digm. We doc­u­ment how eco­nom­ics came to dis­em­bed it­self from broader so­ci­etal analy­sis and how this has in­flu­enced pub­lic pol­icy in prob­lem­atic ways, lead­ing to priv­i­leg­ing of ef­fi­ciency over re­silience. We then go a step fur­ther to con­sider the role of eco­nomic ev­i­dence in pub­lic pol­icy more gen­er­ally. Fur­ther­more, we demon­strate how het­ero­dox eco­nom­ics can en­rich our un­der­stand­ings of our economies’ weak­nesses and of how to build a more re­silient and just econ­omy. We con­clude that we need an ex­pla­na­tion of the cri­sis that is ca­pa­ble of see­ing the econ­omy as more than just mar­kets and as em­bed­ded in so­ci­ety; one that is ca­pa­ble of link­ing the causes and con­se­quences of the pan­demic to our sys­tems of pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Read the full paper.

Categories
Book review Critique of Mainstream Economics Marx

Review of Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

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I recently wrote a review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology for Nature. Read the full review.

Categories
Critique of Mainstream Economics Economic Development Experimental Economics Publications

Impoverished Economics? A Critical Assessment of the New Gold Standard (new essay)

I wrote an essay for the World Development Symposium on Development and Poverty Alleviation. Here is the abstract:

This article situates the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in the history of thought on development, tracing how the focus, theory and methods have shifted in the field. The article evaluates theoretical and methodological critiques of the way randomized control trials (RCTs) are employed by the laureates, as well as attempts to overcome these challenges. In terms of theory, the article demonstrates what gets lost when experiments are guided by methodological individualism and assumptions of individual utility-maximizing behavior. In terms of methodology, the article unpacks the limits of RCTs related to their causal model, and their lack of attention to human agency and wider socio-economic context. Finally, the article discusses the experimental approach’s relevance for research and policy-making and cautions against any approach becoming a “gold standard,” due to the importance of pluralism for maintaining an open debate about development.

Read the full article here and do check out the other essays as well.