I recently asked a person from a developing country (he has an economics PhD from one of your universities and not necessarily a recent graduate) about the values he had learned in the university in terms of public service? He replied he had learned none and he was willing to work for a totalitarian government and it’s ok for him to accept bribes if he were working for the government.
This disturbed me a lot. So I would appreciate if the three professors could elaborate a bit on your blogs the values of integrity that you expect from freshly minted economics PhDs from both of your universities.
Assorted on India
12 years ago
5 comments:
I disagree. Treating your students with respect means treating them as adults, as autonomous individuals capable of moral choice.
It's not the job of an Economics graduate program to lecture 21+ years old on morality. (Whatever the kind.)
That being said, I do think a Hippocrates' Oath type of thing, for economists, makes sense. On a voluntary basis, of course. "First, do no harm."
What's the economics equivalent of How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman- or has such a book not been written?
May I take this opportunity to ask you a question? I am a retired mathematician and trying to learn some economics. Mike Reay in http://academic.reed.edu/sociology/faculty/reay/papers/ReayAuthority.pdf says:
"Core skills such as instinctively considering costs as well as
benefits, focusing on incentives and maximizing decisions, assuming prices respond to supply and demand, and acknowledging opportunity costs, were what most subjects mentioned when asked to identify ‘what economists know that others don’t.’
This ‘core’ has in the past sometimes been glossed as simply ‘mere undergraduate level’
theory used by lowly applied practitioners (e.g. Enthoven 1963, Allen 1977, Hamilton 1992), but this is misleading insofar as it was the academic as much as the nonacademic interviewees who identified it as central to their unique expertise. "
Can you suggest some books and aricles for this sort of core economocs? I asked this questions in a few sites like Rodrik's and there is no response so far. I find that articles like the recent one by Jonathan Shaw in the Harvard Magazine are understandable. Thanks.
When we are lectured about economics, I hope that we do not take it as the Gospel, rather, we treat it as something to be discussed. I would hope that a lecture on ethics and moral choice would be treated in the same manner, not as indoctrination. The moral consequences of the application of economic policies can be far reaching, and these consequences should, at the very least, be featured in a graduate program designed to send people out into the world as important decision makers.
Gabriel,so economists' need to take an oath to the Invisible Hand?
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