There are some lessons about economics I find myself repeating to both my students and also to myself. So I’ve decided to share five of those lessons in this blogpost. These are five lessons I want economics students to know, all the way from the first undergraduate year through to the senior year, and perhaps even beyond to graduate school. These things may also be of interest to students of the other social sciences, or even simply to people who are interested in economics and the economy regardless of their training and profession. Thus I use the term “economics students” very broadly. Here’s what I think you should know:
(1) Economics is immensely difficult. It is not difficult because the mathematics is tough (it isn’t) but because its problems are social problems. (Personally, I’m just not interested in the questions which you answer using mathematics.) There is no introductory or intermediate or advanced economics. All of economics is difficult. That is both wonderful and terrible for the novice; and also for the more experienced hand, and perhaps for the master as well. That means that in some sense, the novice and the master are on the same ground: economics itself offers enough to be shared by both the student and teacher alike. Some if not all the material I teach scares me as much as it scares my students (if not more).
And it is all difficult because at every level you are dealing with the consequences and implications of exercising your own judgment and intelligence. You are constantly making choices which, whether you are aware or not, go back to fundamental problems of method and vision, of the very categories through which you try to see the world. That is why it requires so much time. Because it takes a while to hone your judgment and realize what you’re saying, and whether or not that’s what you actually wanted or expected to say about the economy. And it is difficult because you live and breathe capitalism even as you try to analyze it while you’re high on it, crippled and blinded by it. It is a constant effort to come to a truthful understanding of your personal near-irrelevance in its beastly structure.
(2) You don’t need a degree in economics or have a relevant job to be an “economist”. You have to be interested in the problems of the discipline and have the willingness to apply your intelligence to them for a long time with no expectation of making progress. Ultimately, what makes you an economist is your curiosity about the problems of economics and your willingness to apply yourself to them. If you have been doing that for a week, you can legitimately call yourself an economist. You can stop calling yourself that when you give up. And recognizing yourself as an economist matters – it forces you to think about what it means to be an economist, and to choose your methods and problems accordingly, and to take on both the joys and burdens of being an economist.
The burdens of being an economist are more obvious. Economists fail to explain and manage economies every day. That is partly because most of the profession has burdened itself with habit of largely using a poor set of tools. And this is not a new problem. It is almost a hundred years since Keynes tried to bring about a revolution in economic thinking. But economics is also burdensome because of the difficulty, once again, of explaining and anticipating social problems and behaviors (under conditions of uncertainty, not scarcity (Skidelsky 2003, 529)) as they exist in the real world. The consolation is that it brings some joy too.
(3) To be an economist is to be a part of something special. In a narrow sense, you are part of a professional community stretching across the globe. And the diversity of views and methods means that no matter what your intellectual inclinations, you can be sure to find a community which shares your convictions and concerns. And that matters a lot. Economics, like any scientific enterprise, is not done alone. It is done in a community.
More broadly, it is a scholarly enterprise and an intellectual craft stretching back in time at least as far back as Adam Smith. Many a great mind has committed itself to these problems and to this discipline. You have the chance to do the same. It offers a way of “designing a way of living” (Mills 2000, 196). If you decide to “follow the truth of scholarship wherever it may lead” (The New School’s by-laws) you can go to very interesting and pleasantly surprising places in life. That is because the truth of scholarship refers not only to your scientific discoveries but also to what your commitment to economics will teach you, given enough time, about yourself and your life.
(4) There are a great many ways of doing economics. Studying the history and philosophy of economics, largely ignored by the profession, are great ways to learn about this diversity and to ensure that your study of economics will be enjoyable and your understanding of the economy sharper. Economics and economists make a lot of excuses for why the history of thought isn’t covered early on in an economics education, lame excuses like “tHeRe Is A lOt To cOvEr.” Funnily enough, this doesn’t seem to be a problem for philosophy, despite arguably having far more to cover if we mark the beginning of modern economics (understood as the study of capitalism) with Adam Smith. Studying the history and philosophy of economics will equip you to better see the roots and implications of the intellectual choices mentioned in (1). Your universities and departments are unlikely to help you do this. History and philosophy of economics are not considered a necessary part of an economics education, unfortunately. So you are either on your own, or you’re in the company of a special minority who are smart enough to understand the importance of these fields.
(5) There are many accomplished and intelligent people working in this field. Many of them hold diametrically opposite and diverse views. Do not confuse their personal accomplishment and intelligence with the truth or correctness or value of their views. If you do, your intellect will be violently pulled in all sorts of different directions, with a force which is proportional to their accomplishment and intelligence, and also depending on how easily persuaded and uncritical you are. In the end, you will have no views or ideas of your own. For your evolution and education as an economist, your own views and ideas are far more important and consequential than whether a particular accomplished economist agrees with you or disagrees with you. That almost does not matter. Remember: economists love playing the status game. Figure out whether that’s a game that interests you and to what extent. Expend your energy accordingly. There are many ways to signal status, and it is ok to want to signal status. Pick the ways which cost less in terms of intellectual integrity and independence.
References
Mills, C. Wright. 2000. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Skidelsky, Robert. 2003. John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman. Penguin: New York.
Daniyal Khan 