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Economics: the Just-Right Liberal Arts Major?
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By Gabriel Martinez, July 12, 2010 in Pedagogy and Teaching

So says David Colander at the Chronicle of Higher Education:

If the economics major's popularity is not due to its intellectual dynamism or connection to business, to what is it due? I suspect a mundane explanation: It is the "just right" major. By "just right" I mean that the economics major provides the appropriate middle ground of skill preparation, analytic rigor, and intellectual excitement that students look for in a major, and that employers look for when hiring students.

The book he cites in the article is Educating Economists: The Teagle Discussion on Re-evaluating the Undergraduate Economics Major.  His paper within that book was published in the American Economic Review.

Tags: Economics

2 Comments
Lee Trepanier on Jul 13, 2010 at 11:18 am

I wasn't able to read the article, since I'm not a subscriber to the Chronicle. When Colander refers to economics as the "right major" does he mean the way economics is usually taught, i.e., mathematical models? If that were the case, I would have to take exception to economics as the "right major," since the mathematical model excludes important aspects of reality in one's analysis.

John Mueller on Jul 15, 2010 at 10:41 am

Interesting post, Gabriel. I also could not read the Chronicles article, but found the Colander-McGoldrick article to which it refers ("The Economics Major as Part of a Liberal Education: The Teagle Report," David Colander and KimMarie McGoldrick) by googlling.

I don't think I'd quite agree with Lee that mathematization per se is the problem. The main reason we have a mathematical economics today is that Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas all conceived justice, utility, and love--fundamental concepts in moral philosophy--in explicitly mathematical terms. The oldest mathematical economic equations are in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, V.3 and V. 5, to describe the formulae for distributive justice and justice in exchange, respectively. Aristotle and Aquinas even provided charts illustrating them.

The real trouble in economics began when Adam Smith eliminated two of the four elements of scholastic economics (distribution and utility) in his revision that launched classical economics, leaving only production and exchange. Because doing so eliminated more than half of human nature. Today's "neoclassical" economists have restored only one element (utility). In my view, economics is now in the process of rediscovering the most important element, distribution, which describes interpersonal relations: love/hate and justice.

What the Colander-McGoldrick article does not mention (unless I missed it in skimming) is the significance of the abolition, starting in 1972 at the University of Chicago, of the previous requirement that students of economics master its history before being granted a degree. This is why economists are ignorant of the AAA's.

Merely reinstating the history-of-thought requirement would go a long way toward reversing the damage economics has caused, and incidentally make the economics departments of liberal arts colleges competitive with the research universities that have been the powerhouses in economics for the past two generations. The liberal arts colleges would have a competitive advantage in coming decades and restore economics to where it started--as a colony of moral philosophy, a self-styled "imperial science."

I personally am hopeful about the prognosis. Max Planck said that "science progresses from funeral to funeral." This was certainly true of the transition from classical to neoclassical economics starting in the 1870s. I believe it will also be true in coming decades of the progression from neoclassical to "neoscholastic" economics.

about the author

Gabriel Martinez
Gabriel Martinez

I am Associate Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Department of Economics at Ave Maria University. I have been in the Economics Department since its beginning and have taught over fifteen different courses at Ave Maria University, particularly in the areas of macroeconomics, international economics, development economics, Catholic social teaching, economic history, and social philosophy. My two favorite courses to teach are Intermediate Macroeconomics and Markets, State, and Institutions.

My work is in the general area of international finance and open-economy macroeconomics, with a focus on developing countries. My dissertation focused on the 1999 economic collapse in Ecuador,using a combination of historical, theoretical, and empirical analyses. My paper on the role of deregulation, moral hazard, and overconfidence in the Ecuadorian financial crisis was published by the Cambridge Journal of Economics. Financial crises are a perennial topic, with causes that are complex and deep, inextricably intermingled with politics and ethics. My Ph.D. is from the University of Notre Dame.