Should Economists be Experts in Markets or in Human Nature?

Jihen Chandoul, a member of the Post-Colonialisms Today Working Group, discusses the impact of import-dependency on African food supply chains since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This video animates part of the talk “On Economics” by Ha-Joon Chang in which he states that economics is not a science for experts but for everyone. Chang further argues why it is important to take into account different perspectives on economics – he identifies at least nine school of thoughts which all have their strengths and weaknesses and presents examples on free trade and well-being. Chang further elaborates on the difficulties of changing the economic status quo.

Es ist immer noch zweifelhaft, ob Ökonom*innen mit ihrem Instrumentarium die nächste Wirtschaftskrise vorhersagen können. Als erster Grund ist dafür der nicht-systemische Status von Krisen in Mainstream-Theorien zu nennen. Zweifelsohne entwickeln empirisch arbeitende Makroökonomen Warn-Indikatoren für Finanzkrisen (Schularick und Taylor 2012), es gibt auch makroökonomsiche Modelle, die Krisendynamiken aufgreifen (Kumhof et al. 2015) und Debatten im Mainstream der VWL über den richtigen Umgang mit der Mathematik (Romer ABC).

What data is used in the economic models of the IPCC? How problematic is it, that tipping points are often ignored? A very interesting presentation by Steve Keen during the OECD Conference "Averting Systemic Collapse".