|Peter Boettke|
David Colander in the current issue of the Eastern Economic Journal argues that the core principles of economics are often taught in an unsubtle, unsophisticated and ultimately unhelpful way. Greg Mankiw responds.
Both Colander and Mankiw are defenders of the discipline against critics, and both have championed presenting the principles of economics in as useful and as engaging a manner as is possible. But they have differences that should be discussed by teachers of economics.
Both are successful textbook authors. The textbooks I am associated with -- Heyne, Boettke and Prychitko, The Economic Way of Thinking, 13th Edition (2013) and Kasper, Streit and Boettke, Institutional Economics: Property, Competition, Policy, 2nd Edition (2012) -- are far from the success in terms of sales that either of their textbooks have achieved. Though Heyne's book did make it to 13 edition, and in many corners it achieved almost "cult status" for teaching sound economics, and it has been used over the years not only teachers across the North America in principles courses as well as high school Advanced Placement classes, but by Nobel Prize winners such as Douglass North in their freshman seminar at Washington University. Doug, in fact, wrote an appreciation for Paul that has graced the various editions since Paul's death.
Like Mankiw, our textbook strives to teach students a way of thinking that will enable them to understand the world in which they live and to think critically about discussions about the world -- whether at a dinner party, or in deliberations about public policy choices. We do not strive to convince them about any particular set of policies, but to give them the framework to debate policies. Of course, as Paul described in the earlier versions, The Economic Way of Thinking is influenced by two figures in economics --- F. A. Hayek and James Buchanan, and as a practical model of textbook writing one must not ever forget the influence of Armen Alchian and William Allen's University Economics on the structure and argumentative strategy.
Two things are critical to keep in mind when thinking about The Economic Way of Thinking -- the core idea is the persistent and consistent application of opportunity cost reasoning from beginning to end, and second what you emphasize in the text and in the class is what the students will remember. Paul put this very eloquently --- "Teach the principles of economics as if it will be the last class your students will ever take in economics and it will be the first of many classes in economics they will take." I heard those words and read those words as I started my own teaching career, and the one fact of my teaching career that I take great pride over is that I have had undergraduate students from each university/college I have taught go on to graduate school in economics and they have attributed their desire to study economics more due to my class (or classes) --- every school -- GMU (1986-88), Oakland University (1988-90), NYU (1990-98), Manhattan College (1997-98), and GMU (1998-) Many of these students are now professors, and they have turned on students to economics and continue to do so. I know there are other criteria for successful teaching -- evaluations are one, generating majors another, awards another, emails from former alumni remembering your class is yet another very important indicator of teaching effectiveness. Since I love the discipline of economic science -- perhaps irrationally so given my disgruntlement with most of what passes for 'economics' today -- I have always had a very simplistic measure of teaching effectiveness: teach basic economics really well, generate majors; teach intermediate and upper level electives really well, generate graduate students; teach graduate classes really well, generate future professors; engage those future professors in research projects, generate tenured full professors who have teaching and research impact of their own. REPEAT for 50 years and you will have a cadre of teachers and researchers teaching the economic way of thinking to thousands of students from HS to college to graduate school.
Economics taught right, I would argue, is an invitation to inquiry and produces in the minds of the HS and college students, a mind-quake that will change the way they think about the world. It is my sincere hope that my teaching has this effect on graduate students as well. In my book Living Economics, I divided the book into 3 sections -- Section 1 -- what are the core principles of the living body of mainline economic thought*; Section 2 -- who were the great teachers in modern times of the mainline of economic thought; Section 3 -- what are the implications of the way we practice economics if these teachings were widely adopted.
The primary strength of economics is that when taught right it opens up the mysteries of the diversity of human existences (across cultures and across time) to understanding and explanation, the weakness is that if taught poorly students get turned off in the process of being presented the technical principles (often communicated with graphical and mathematical representations) in a sterile and dull manner. Students don't see the universal in the particular blackboard examples, the don't see the common-sense reasoning because their professors aren't doing the job of making the learning of economics both enjoyably entertaining and vital to helping them understand the pressing issues under deliberation in public policy disputes. Our job as teachers, James Buchanan taught me, was to teach the principles of economics so that our students could become informed participants in the democratic process of collective decision-making. This is, he stressed, really the only justification for the public support of economic education. And teaching those principles of economics should be a task we never tire of, and never disrespect ... it takes varied iterations to force alien concepts upon reluctant minds, he repeatedly said in classes.
I pursued a career in economics because I had an absolutely fantastic teacher -- Hans Sennholz -- that produced a mind-quake in me and that inspired me to read and read and read economic thinkers, economic controversies, and economic policy histories. He transformed my life. I believe economic education should be transformative. To the critics of economics who said economics is boring, irrelevant and taught by arrogant men, I say -- that may very well be true, but hopefully you would not say that about me as a teacher. I hope my classes in "the economic way of thinking" are exciting intellectual adventures, that invite inquiry into imagined possibles based on relevant examination of the problems with the present, and that reflect the humility yet pure joy of someone just finding pleasure in figuring things out.
Scarcity implies trade-offs; trade-offs require decision-makers to negotiate them; negotiating trade-offs requires information and incentives; information and incentives are a function of the institutional environment within which decisions are being made. Choice and constraints; information and incentives; coordination of plans through time, and efficiency in exchange and production are all topics on the table in that basic introduction to economics. And remember -- students will remember what you stress; you haven't taught until they have learned; and for advanced students, it is what they have learned after they believe they have learned it all that matters most. Teaching is a calling, and as academic economists, it is probably the most important job any of us will ever do even while we are insisting that we need more time for our research. One argument is right -- teaching economics well to HS and college students is vitally important -- the other argument is actually absurd as probably 90% of research will not be remembered beyond the decade in which it is written (substantive content and shelf-life are the two criteria that I use in assessing research, placement is actually far behind those). Anyway, embrace teaching, devote yourself to being a good teacher, and strive to always be better and never self-satisfied and the best check on that --- are you exciting students enough about economics that they want to study it at greater depths and debate its fine points and wrestle with its puzzles and paradoxes, and seek to apply it everyone and everywhere. Are you helping them become informed participants in the democratic process of collective action? Has the mind-quake you have helped produce set them on a path where their natural curiosity guides them on their intellectual adventure of a life-time?
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*Mainline economics is defined as adherence to set of propositions that follow from the economic way of thinking, whereas mainstream economics is whoever and whatever is defined as currently scientifically fashionable. At times in the history of our discipline, the mainline has been the mainstream, but at other times the mainstream has deviated significantly from the mainline. In discussing mainline economics, I think of what are the core characteristics of a style of reasoning we dub "economics" or "political economy" that can be traced from Adam Smith to Vernon Smith. In my book, I argue that this can be stated as those thinkers who derive the 'invisible hand theorem' from the 'rational choice postulate' via 'institutional analysis'. In short, it is not behavioral assumptions, nor an ideological position that defines mainline, but a style of thinking that puts the primary analytical focus in the explanation on the institutional framework. Same people, different rules, James Buchanan taught, produce different games. From Adam Smith's discussion of teaching at Oxford versus Glasgow to Thomas Schelling's discussion of hockey helmets or neighborhood segregation reflects a similar style of reasoning (I choose Schelling to reflect that "invisible hand" explanations need not be only of the benevolent universe type); in this style of reasoning we always have an animating chooser, an institutional filter, and finally an equilibrating tendency -- critical though is that the analytical work is being done by the institutional filter. Mainline economics whether in the hands of Hume and Smith, or Say, or Mill, or Mises and Hayek, or Buchanan and Tullock, or Elinor Ostrom and Vernon Smith turns our attention quickly to the institutional framework -- the rules of property, contract and consent -- that are in operation.
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