Tonight, I attended economics majors night with Greg. We both went there trying to figure out what the hell to do with an econ major (and left with some answers, shockingly enough). While the blabla from the career center people was not particularly interesting, I did get a lot out of a small discussion with Professor Waller and Professor Evans, both from the Econ & Econometrics Department. Now, obviously, these are two professors who are very mainstream. However, they did say a couple things tonight that raised some questions for me. The main topic of our conversation with them was econ grad school. They were talking about the pros and cons and what-not, as well as what we need to apply, yada yada yada (apparently Linear Algebra, Diff Eq, and Real Analysis are requirements). Someone asked about whether grad schools looked at service and volunteering when considering applicants, and the answer was a sharp no. Waller expounded on this, saying that Grad schools look for a very narrow type of person, for better or worse, and ultimately care about whether you can unearth problems and solve them.
Now, one of the main focuses of this group is to unearth problems in economics. However, because of our limited skill sets and training, we do not really have the ability to solve the problems. So, my question is this- how useful is heterodox economics, if it only raises concerns but does not provide real world solutions. Waller said that ultimately, people will only listen if you can give them a solution and a number. Should we limit ourselves to this paradigm? If not, what purpose will heterodox economics serve? Is there some way the two can be integrated?
Anyways, these are the questions I left tonight with. Interestingly, as we were leaving, Greg and I were talking, and we both sort of agreed that getting a PhD in econ might be a worthwhile endeavor (math course barriers aside). As this path begins to look like a very possible reality, how can I keep the concerns of heterodox in mind while solving problems? A night of questions, indeed.
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First of all, I think that heterodox economics would be useful even if it provided only questions and no corresponding answers. As Waller and Evans said tonight, the first part is finding good questions to raise, and by doing that, heterodox economics creates a foundation upon which to build.
Furthermore, I don't think the claim that heterodox economics only provides questions and no answers is true. For example, feminist economics raises the question of whether economic models have flawed assumptions because only the perspective of males is usually considered. Then, they propose how they think the models should change and the policy implications that would accompany this.
All this being said, I think your point is important such that we don't get caught only trying to find questions to raise/areas to criticize b/c the questions are only worthwhile in that they ultimately lead to answers.
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