Students Challenge the Standard Economic Model

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ILLUSTRATION: JOHN A. JACOBS
Students challenge the typical method of teaching economics.

Learn how students challenge the standard economic model.

Environmentalists, small-scale agriculturalists and alternative energy enthusiasts have been told on more than one occasion that their ideas weren’t “good economics.” But a student-led initiative is seeking to change exactly what “good economics” means.

At an international economics conference held last August at the University of Missouri — Kansas City (UMKC), students challenge the standard economic model with 25 participants signing “The Kansas City Proposal,” an open letter to economic departments worldwide urging them to change their ways.

“Orthodox economics doesn’t really encompass reality,” says Franziska Pitcher, a graduate student who was one of the original signees. The orthodox school of thought is that markets basically will end up doing whatever’s best without any control or guidance. Most people have encountered this theory in textbook illustrations of “invisible hands” that move workers from factories where they are not needed to factories where they are.

But with global warming, looming energy crises and multinational corporations that are more powerful than the countries in which they operate, students are asking whether orthodox economics’ devotion to math and numbers can really be the end-all and be-all of economic theory.

  • Published on Feb 1, 2002
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