A Harvard Education at Work

A former T.A. goes ballastic (in Adbusters!) on Gregory Mankiw, calling him "one of the most effective and talented propagandists of our time" and ripping on him intro economics textbook:

But what is most worrisome is that Mankiw’s text presents economics as a unified discipline, entirely committed to the neoliberal agenda. Mankiw believes that markets are the solution to everything – and he would like students to think likewise. According to Mankiw, if a problem persists, it can only be for one of two reasons: the market is imperfect, or it is inexistent. No other explanation for persisting economic or social problems is permitted. ...

But the problem is that, to the amazement of his students, Mankiw never mentions self-restraint, and downplays government regulation as a way to regulate production and diminish consumption or waste. Nor does he bring up the imperative to use renewable sources of energy. In fact, Mankiw even insists in his textbook that we are not running out of resources (because if that were the case, the price of oil would be much higher than it is now). Climate change is a critical issue, caused by ever-growing economic activity – but it doesn’t even merit an index entry. ...

While Mankiw’s text is easy for professors to use, it oversimplifies economic theory and leaves out the ways in which markets can degrade human well-being, undermine societies, and threaten the planet. Each year, tens of thousands of students go out into the world, with Mankiw’s biases as a roadmap to the future. But we know that the neoliberal agenda is more and more disputed outside universities. And within universities, alternative textbooks are flourishing. One can thus hope that these new textbooks, with their greater relevance to real world problems – and their better acknowledgment of the diversity and complexity of economic thought – will soon out-compete Mankiw’s bible. As a believer in competition, Professor Mankiw could only consider this to be fair game.

Mankiw responds thusly:

When I teach introductory economics, either in the classroom or in my textbook, I view myself as an ambassador for the economics profession. I try to represent the economic mainstream, not my personal political views. Some students may view the economic mainstream as right of center. That assessment is probably correct, at least as judged by the universe of college professors. But the job of an introductory course is to present, as honestly as possible, the consensus of the profession. If the typical economist is more market-friendly than the typical literature professor, then that point of view will likely be reflected in the leading textbooks.

I was most surprised to read that the author of this critique was once a member of the army of teaching fellows I oversee in ec 10. I wish he had come to talk with me about his views while he was involved in the course. I have long been intrigued by the post-autistic economics movement. A conversation on the topic would have been edifying for both of us.

But this whole thing is silly. Dr. Raveaud is surely correct that most of Dr. Mankiw's introductory text on economics is overly simplistic. It is an introductory text, after all. But Dr. Raveaud is simply wrong about other things. Mankiw does discuss Pigouvian taxes and is a strong proponent of them, in fact, to correct externalities; he does propose government regulation to control problems of the commons which include environmental issues; his textbook does present models in which perfect competition does not exist; and all of his models assume that political rights are more or less equal. Additionally, it would be impossible for Dr. Mankiw to correct the simplicity of much introductory economic theory with greater nuance without first teaching the simpler models. Economics is not unique in this regard; all sciences start with the simplest models and assumptions first, then make the picture more complex as one's education extends*. Lastly, it is laughable on its face that Dr. Raveaud would complain about propaganda in a publication such as Adbusters, which seems unabashedly dedicated to the same.

*This may be even more true in economics and other social sciences, however. It is often said that once one gets past the introductory level, one spends the rest of his economics education unlearning everything he learned in the first year. This isn't necessary in the hard sciences.