EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Preference Falsification in Teaching

Stephen Kinsella ()

Econ Journal Watch, 2009, vol. 6, issue 3, 352-358

Abstract: Today’s macroeconomics courses are built around Solow and Romerstyle growth theories, and micro-founded equilibrium macro models of the ‘real business cycle’ variety. Hewing to a course description with such an intellectual structure is a derogation of my personal and professional views. This short, confessional note explores the activity of teaching what one does not believe, and argues this is preference falsification writ large. The act of teaching equilibrium business cycle theories to students who take these theories out into the world and act upon them there is, I believe, socially destructive. Yet many economists engage in this public activity contra their personal preferences. One solution is judicious use of the course description, in order that a broad church be maintained.

Keywords: Preference falsification; pedagogy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A1 A10 A11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://econjwatch.org/File+download/14/ejw_wat_sep09_kinsella.pdf?mimetype=pdf (application/pdf)
https://econjwatch.org/343 (text/html)

Related works:
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:ejw:journl:v:6:y:2009:i:3:p:352-358

Access Statistics for this article

Econ Journal Watch is currently edited by Daniel Klein

More articles in Econ Journal Watch from Econ Journal Watch Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jason Briggeman ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:ejw:journl:v:6:y:2009:i:3:p:352-358