Reclaiming the University: transforming economics as a discipline

Arne Heise

The Journal of Philosophical Economics, 2018, vol. 11, issue 2, 37-66

Abstract: Economics as a discipline is currently in disarray. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, academic experts, students, commentators, practitioners and politicians all questioned the status of academic economics and many called for a ‘new economic thinking’. Nearly a decade later, however, there is little evidence of a transformation in research and teaching. The present study first clarifies what is meant by a transformation of economics as a discipline, since this remains an ill-defined term and may be interpreted in very different ways. It then establishes the conditions of a successful transformation of the discipline in terms of intra-disciplinary and extra-disciplinary factors. The paper argues that economics as a discipline cannot be expected to trigger this transformation by itself (i.e. via self-regulation), since the ‘market for economic ideas’ is prone to market failure. In addition, the influence of external factors and actors on the market may serve to distort the congruence between the individual researcher’s utility and societal welfare. External incentives are therefore required to establish constitutional guardrails that ensure fair competition between ideas.

Keywords: pluralism; transformation; mainstream economics; heterodox economics; regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://jpe.ro/pdf.php?id=8006 (application/pdf)
https://jpe.ro/?id=revista&p=458 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Reclaiming the university: Transforming economics as a discipline (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bus:jphile:v:11:y:2018:i:2:n:3

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Philosophical Economics is currently edited by Valentin Cojanu

More articles in The Journal of Philosophical Economics from Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, The Journal of Philosophical Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Valentin Cojanu ().