front cover of The Changing Face of Economics
The Changing Face of Economics
Conversations with Cutting Edge Economists
David Colander, Richard P. F. Holt, and J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.
University of Michigan Press, 2004
The Changing Face of Economics gives the reader a sense of the modern economics profession and how it is changing. The volume does so with a set of nine interviews with cutting edge economists, followed by interviews with two Nobel Prize winners, Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow, reflecting on the changes that are occurring. What results is a clear picture of today's economics--and it is no longer standard neoclassical economics.

The interviews and commentary together demonstrate that economics is currently undergoing a fundamental shift in method and is moving away from traditional neoclassical economics into a dynamic set of new methods and approaches. These new approaches include work in behavioral economics, experimental economics, evolutionary game theory and ecological approaches, complexity and nonlinear dynamics, methodological analysis, and agent-based modeling.

David E. Colander is Professor of Economics, Middlebury College.

J. Barkley Rosser, Jr., is Professor of Economics and Kirby L. Kramer Jr. Professor of Business Administration, James Madison University.

Richard P. F. Holt is Professor of Churchill Honors and Economics, Southern Oregon University.




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front cover of Educating Economists
Educating Economists
David Colander and Reuven Brenner, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 1992
What should economists learn in undergraduate and graduate programs? And how does this differ from what students are being taught? In a series of provocative essays, the contributors to Educating Economists cast a critical eye upon the profession and offer solutions to the serious problems they identify in contemporary economics education. The failure of economics teaching is the theme that connects all of the papers in this volume: the failure to develop the skills needed by undergraduate teachers of economics and the failure to prepare students to do work in government and business. The authors point out that professors have lost sight of the skills needed to deal with real-world data, to gain access to existing knowledge, and to critically examine issues, models, and data. Instead, they argue, tenure-minded graduate professors, focused on the use of high-powered mathematical techniques to write formal, technical articles, prepare students only to do abstract research within a framework that just a few other fellow graduates can understand. This situation results in the systematic degradation of the quality of undergraduate economics education and of the institutional usefulness of economics. The contributors conclude that a substantial restructuring of economics education and of the economics profession, including its tenure requirements, is needed and would allow the discipline—and its practitioners—to make a much stronger and more relevant contribution to the people and institutions whose behavior it attempts to explain.
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front cover of Race, Liberalism, and Economics
Race, Liberalism, and Economics
David Colander, Robert E. Prasch, and Falguni A. Sheth, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2009
Noneconomists often think that economists' approach to race is almost exclusively one of laissez-faire. Racism, Liberalism, and Economics argues that economists' ideas are more complicated. The book considers economists' support of markets in relation to the challenge of race and race relations and argues that their support of laissez-faire has traditionally been based upon a broader philosophical foundation of liberalism and history: what markets have and have not achieved in the past, and how that past relates to the future. The book discusses the concepts of liberalism and racism, the history and use of these terms, and how that history relates to policy issues. It argues that liberalism is consistent with a wide variety of policies and that the broader philosophical issues are central in choosing policies.

The contributors show how the evolution of racist ideas has been a subtle process that is woven into larger movements in the development of scientific thought; economic thinking is embedded in a larger social milieu. Previous discussions of policies toward race have been constrained by that social milieu, and, since World War II, have largely focused on ending legislated and state-sanctioned discrimination. In the past decade, the broader policy debate has moved on to questions about the existence and relative importance of intangible sources of inequality, including market structure, information asymmetries, cumulative processes, and cultural and/or social capital. This book is a product of, and a contribution to, this modern discussion. It is uniquely transdisciplinary, with contributions by and discussions among economists, philosophers, anthropologists, and literature scholars.

The volume first examines the early history of work on race by economists and social scientists more generally. It continues by surveying American economists on race and featuring contributions that embody more modern approaches to race within economics. Finally it explores several important policy issues that follow from the discussion.

". . . adds new insights that contribute significantly to the debate on racial economic inequality in the U.S. The differing opinions of the contributors provide the broad perspective needed to examine this extremely complex issue."
--James Peoples, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

"There is an immense economic literature on racial discrimination, employing a variety of models and decomposition methods. This volume makes a unique contribution by focusing on the philosophical assumptions at the root of this analysis and by presenting many sides of the very vigorous debate surrounding these controversial issues."
--Thomas Maloney, University of Utah

"By focusing upon the progress of analytical technique, historians of economic thought have grossly neglected the symbiotic relation of economics to public policy and ideology. This collection of essays offers a most welcome breach of disciplinary apartheid. Seizing upon recent research in the almost forgotten writings about race of Classical economists and their contemporaries, it relates nineteenth-century ideas to current debates about economic discrimination and other manifestations of racism. As the writing is both learned and lively, the book should appeal both to the generally educated reader and to teachers of courses in multiculturalism."
--Melvin Reder, Isidore Brown and Gladys J. Brown Professor Emeritus of Urban and Labor Economics, University of Chicago
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