What Explains Economic Illiteracy?
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Notoriously unorthodox economics professor (yet notoriously orthodox champion of central planning — go figure) Robert Frank blames — surprise — mainstream economics professors:
The problem of economic illiteracy — which at this point is indeed a dangerous, sometimes lethal, epidemic in America — derives not from failed economics instruction, but from failed philosophy instruction.
For example, we can (and do) show essentially every college freshman — even most high school students probably — just why the minimum wage is counterproductive. The students nod in agreement, answer correctly on final exams, graduate — and promptly demand increases in the minimum wage. Because, economics be damned, it gives them warm fuzzy feelings to do so.
The problem is not that students, or politicians or people generally, "don't get" economics. The problem is that they "don't get" the nature of the universe and of human existence.
If I were back teaching introductory economics again, I would, like Cato the Elder (or Cardinal Borusa*), end each class with a simple proclamation and warning:
The laws of economics are more like the laws of physics than the laws of legislators, and should always be respected as such.
(Via Marginal Revolution; See also Greg Mankiw.)
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*"Only in mathematics do we find truth."
What we know is that the course as it's traditionally taught doesn't achieve much impact. Students are given tests six months after they've taken the course to see whether they understand basic economic concepts, and students who've taken the course don't score any better on those tests than students who didn't take the course at all. That seems like a pretty scandalous level of performance, to my eye.This is, of course, utter nonsense. How much Latin, or physics or Chaucer, would a student remember six months after they've completed an introductory course in the subject? That is simply not "the problem," any more than having too many toothpastes is "the problem."
The problem of economic illiteracy — which at this point is indeed a dangerous, sometimes lethal, epidemic in America — derives not from failed economics instruction, but from failed philosophy instruction.
For example, we can (and do) show essentially every college freshman — even most high school students probably — just why the minimum wage is counterproductive. The students nod in agreement, answer correctly on final exams, graduate — and promptly demand increases in the minimum wage. Because, economics be damned, it gives them warm fuzzy feelings to do so.
The problem is not that students, or politicians or people generally, "don't get" economics. The problem is that they "don't get" the nature of the universe and of human existence.
If I were back teaching introductory economics again, I would, like Cato the Elder (or Cardinal Borusa*), end each class with a simple proclamation and warning:
The laws of economics are more like the laws of physics than the laws of legislators, and should always be respected as such.
(Via Marginal Revolution; See also Greg Mankiw.)
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*"Only in mathematics do we find truth."
Posted by Kip on
1 June 2007
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