Tyler Cowen writes about what should be taught more in econ grad school,
Price discrimination. They do it to you more and more! Or perhaps you are striving to do it to others. This is typically covered in a first-year sequence, but how many second-year students really have mastered when it is welfare-improving or not? How it relates to product tying? When it is sustainable against entry or not?
If I were in charge of undergraduate economics, no one would come to graduate school needing to learn about price discrimination. When I taught AP economics in high school, I taught that price discrimination explains everything. That is, most real-world business practices that might seem odd can be explained as attempts to charge more for consumers with the least elastic demand. An intermediate undergraduate microeconomics course ought to spend a lot of time on the topic of price discrimination.
The fundamental question that economic grad schools face is whether to teach math or economics. When I was in grad school, the answer was to teach math. The case for teaching math is that to succeed in the profession you need to be able to “use the tools.”
I think that, at the margin, economics graduate students should study more economics. Economic history is very much worth studying. Financial institutions are worth studying. Calomiris and Haber invites the reader to contemplate financial institutions, history, and public choice.
Intangible factors in the economy are worth studying. You could spend at least a semester with a course on organizational capital, institutions, innovation, trust, etc.
Isn’t it more likely that (with recent trends) to be neither math nor economics, but sociology?
Ocasio-Cortez (econ undergrad Boston U) is peoples’ exhibit A….
thought maybe her’s was home econ.!
Most decent universities, including ones not specializing in economics, still teach real economics. Good ones will emphasis quantitative reasoning.
Non-Econ majors here. Our non-optional intermediate Econ courses included everything related to price discrimination.
Question: What’s more religious than a SJW Catholic education?
Answer: multiple courses in economics at Jesuit institution. Long live the religion of consequentialism.
But, we will take that over woke religion every single time.
#53
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/santa-clara-university-1326
PS Jesus died for your sins unless you are a consequentialist…in that case Bentham or Mill will bear the cross on your behalf. In any event, keep your mouth closed and you will graduate just fine.
Like it or not, the profession is very mathematical and has been for a long time. To actually be a working economist in the private sector, government, or a university you need more than just college algebra or pre calculus. You need to be able to solve integral and differential equations and you need to have at least intermediate statistics under your belt. Indeed, a lot of the economists I follow are doing about as much statistics as they are economics. I understand a lot of people would prefer more pure economic theory get taught, but thats the direction the field has evolved in. I do still agree price discrimination is under studied.
I wonder if macroeconomics has ossified, to the point where the Temple of Orthodox Macroeconomics needs some serious reformation.
Soon, there will be the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great Depression. There are still shrill debates on the causes of, and the solutions to, the Great Depression.
Great scholars, Martin Feldstein and Paul Volcker, spend 40 years predicting higher interest rates and inflation that never came. Quite the opposite.
The totem of “free” trade is worshipped, yet global markets are so suffused with artificial structural impediments, tax laws, regulations and subsidies, that international trade cannot be said to be “free,” “fair” or “foul.” Useless examples are proffered, about trade between Kentucky and Tennessee, or bananas for salmon.
The multinationals rule the globalist system…but does that system work, especially for the employee classes of the developed nations?
Here is a interesting take a couple days ago from Australia:
“RBA Governor Says International Border Closure Could Fuel Surge in Wages
Australia could face a surge in wages growth and inflation if the closure of the country’s international borders to foreign workers continues for some time, Reserve Bank of Australia Gov. Philip Lowe said Thursday.
In a speech to economists, Mr. Lowe said the most significant challenge to labor supply in the country was the closed border, which has normally been a major source of skilled workers for the economy over many decades.”
—30—
What to say?
Meanwhile, all through the Anglosphere, from Hong Kong, to Canada to the US, to Australia, to Great Britain, housing has become formidably expensive sapping middle-class living standards. Yet macroeconomists keep jibber-jabbering about inflation, and not property zoning. The economics profession has become absorbed with mathematical tiddlywinks.
Maybe there should be a econ course titled: “What is true in theory trumps that which is true in fact.”
I can’t say I understand either macroeconomic policies or outcomes for the last 15-20 years. Perhaps the (old?) theoretical framework and associated statistics have simply been gamed into uselessness.
Adair Turner has some interesting insights and Michael Pettis too….orthodox macroeconomics is flailing…
If only the PhD economists understood virus discrimination, which pretty much explained everything.