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30 sats \ 3 replies \ @south_korea_ln 28 Feb \ on: The Pleb Economist #4: I orange pilled my class today econ
Pretty cool!
Are you free to choose what to teach? Or do you have to follow a certain curriculum? Are you free to pick any school of thought? Austrian vs Keynesian? Do you need to balance out both sides?
I am usually pretty free, but I'd probably get some pushback if I started teaching flat-earth theories or anything that is not considered part of the approved curriculum. However, competing theories, i.e. string theory versus quantum gravity, Copenhagen versus many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, etc... would be acceptable of course as they all rigorously follow the scientific method, even if at different levels of experimental confirmability.
Yes, I'm pretty free to teach whatever I want. We have learning objectives determined at the department/college level for each class, but they're pretty high level and easy to align any (reasonable) curriculum to.
I also think that the divides between "schools of thought" in economics is more of a media/policy divide than any real tension within academic circles.
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Happy to hear such a divide does not really exist. I anyhow think both sides have their positives and negatives. It's rare that something really is completely black and white. The Austrian school deserves to be put to the test. In theory, a lot of it seems to make sense, but as far as I know, there haven't been many consistent real-life implementations of these ideas.
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Oh, I should probably back up a step.
So between capital A Austrians and mainstream economists, there is a real methodological divide. Most mainstream econ departments won't hire "capital A Austrians", and an Austrian curriculum will look very very different from a mainstream curriculum.
But within mainstream economics, there isn't much tension or divide between schools of thought. And the divide with Austrians is primarily methodological. Many mainstream economists---myself included and many of my colleagues---are quite sympathetic to Austrian ideas and agree with many of them. We just don't agree with their objection to certain methodological tools like mathematical modeling and empiricism, and most of us aren't as extremely anti-government either.
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