The Scientisation of Economics

Lionel Robbins was appointed head of the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1929 following the sudden death of Allyn Young, the incumbent professor. Young had not made any significant alteration to the teaching at LSE, but from the very first Robbins set about reorganising the profile of economics teaching. The framework within which he did this was one of a ‘science’ based upon ‘economic principles’, and in 1932 his Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science provided the methodological template for his project. This work appears to owe a great deal to Austrian economics, but it can be demonstrated that this was indirect, chiefly through the work of Wicksteed and Wicksell, hence reflecting economics where it had stood in the 1880s. Nonetheless, Robbins was successful in repackaging this work, and his Essay stimulated the development of discussions of economic method. In addition, Robbins’s lectures provided the template for the textbook literature of the 1950s, cementing the influence of the LSE on the training of young economists. However, this training remained at the undergraduate level for the most part due to the lack of labour market demand for economists in Britain; in the United States, by contrast, graduate teaching became the motor through which American economics came to dominate the international teaching of economics.

Higher Commercial Education in Great Britain and Ireland

Intermediate-level adult and commercial education was well established in Manchester and Liverpool by the last third of the nineteenth century, but the first dedicated Faculty of Commerce was founded in Birmingham in 1902, headed by William Ashley. There was, however, little local support for the initiative, which was moreover aimed at school-leavers, and the Faculty of Commerce created in Manchester shortly afterwards had much greater early success. The teaching of commerce in British and Irish universities was established by the 1920s, but there was a general failure to establish a curriculum and develop supporting texts and journals. By the later 1940s these early foundations were increasingly teaching economics, indicating the way in which commercial education in Britain was mainly a vehicle for the development of the teaching of economics.

The Cambridge Tripos in Economic and Political Science

This chapter outlines the final phases of Alfred Marshall’s campaign to expand the teaching of economics in Cambridge by creating a three-year bachelor’s degree as the exclusive vehicle for the teaching of economics. Detailing the university politics and arguments employed for and against the teaching of economics, it shows why the particular content and structure of the curriculum took the form that it did. Some of this is a familiar story; but the founding of the new Tripos was only a new starting point, and too often it has simply been assumed that there is no need to consider how this new Tripos actually functioned in the ensuing years—the ‘success’ in creating the degree is read across to its subsequent history. By examining a database of student results over the first 50 years, a more nuanced picture is obtained. In particular, Marshall had laid great stress on a three-year programme. However, the degree was divided into a two-year Part I and a one-year Part II (revised to a one-year Part I/two-year Part II after 1930) and it can be shown that for some time a minority of students of economics completed three years: some just studied Part I, some just Part II. Furthermore, it can also be demonstrated that for most of the interwar years, students studying for three years were less successful in the final classification than those who had studied for Part II only.

The Moral Sciences Tripos and Cambridge Political Economy

The Cambridge Economics Tripos (an honours degree) was created in 1903 by detaching the teaching of economics in Cambridge from the Moral Sciences Tripos, a broad degree including logic, psychology, and politics and ethics. To understand why Alfred Marshall sought to detach the teaching of economics in this way we need to understand both the nature of this undergraduate programme of study, as well as the model that he sought to emulate: the Mathematical Tripos. This had been until mid-century the primary Cambridge qualification, and rather than a training in mathematics per se, its examination sought to foster a particular intellectual discipline. Students were trained in groups, usually by non-college private ‘coaches’, who drilled students in techniques with whose aid they might solve the questions put to them during several days of examinations. Good students became adept at the speedy selection of the appropriate technique and its application to a given problem. By contrast, the Moral Sciences Tripos was organised around the interpretation of set (canonical) books, and so did not foster this problem-solving approach.

Research in the Classroom: The Teaching of Economics and Gamification

This paper presents the preliminary results of a proposal to facilitate the understanding of concepts and the logic of economy in university students who are not enrolled in the academic program of economics. This proposal is based on the simulation game called Strategies and Markets in Economics (Estrategias y Mercados en Economía – EMERCO), which resulted from a research process in the classroom. The methodology has a qualitative approach and a descriptive type, with an exploratory scope. This study shows the functioning of the game, the selection of the team according to mentality type and brain dominance, in accordance with the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. The game has novel elements in its structure by bringing the real functioning of a market to the classroom, achieving better results in regard to grades and in the assimilation of the contents in introductory classes and fundamentals of economics in higher education.

The Significance of Cyberlearning in Economic Education

We analyze the potentials of web-based and mobile-based digital technology to disseminate, inform, transmit, instruct, and exchange course content in the teaching of economics. Cyberlearning is the use of networked computer technology to enhance the mode of educational content delivery to learners, and involves personal, social, and distributed learning that is mediated by a variety of rapidly evolving computational devices such as computers, tablets, and smart phones, and involving other media such as the Web, and the Cloud. Yet cyberlearning is not only about learning to use computers or to think computationally; social networking has made it clear that the need is much more encompassing, including new modes of collaborating and learning for the full variety of human experiences mediated by networked computing and communications technologies. Educators have continued to search for answers about how new digital tools and environments can be utilized to enhance learning among students of our contemporary “New Age” generation. In the present paper we examine the potentials of cyberlearning and the opportunities it offers for promoting and assessing learning, made possible by new technologies; and how it can help learners to capitalize on those opportunities and the new practices that are made possible by these learning technologies. In particular, we examine ways of using technology for economics education to promote effective learning that result in deep rooted grasping of content, practices, and skills that will ultimately shape attitudes and contribute to enhanced policy and progress in economic matters of society.

Towards a Pluralistic and Experiential Teaching of Economics for the Agenda 2030. the SDSN France Textbook

The goals of the Agenda 2030 require a significant effort to educate and train new generations on sustainability issues. This article presents an initiative in favor of the evolution of the contents and the pedagogy of economics at the University level. We present the new “Ecological Money and Finance” textbook developed by SDSN France. We detail the assumptions, contents and learning objectives proposed in this new textbook. Then, we describe how it can be used in the framework of an experiential pedagogy of economics, taking as a case study the fundamental economics course of the Grande Ecole program at KEDGE BS.

Comrades Do Not Always Agree: How to Promote Cooperation between the Followers of Marx and Sraffa?

In this note I propose two different levels of analysis for organizing the conversation around the Sraffa/Marx polemic. First, the “pragmatic approach” takes into account the immediate circumstances prevailing in the teaching of economics. In particular, we must understand that there is a systematic denial of Marxism in most economic departments, which are dominated by the mainstream neoclassical school, Keynesian thought, and various minor heterodox currents. Second, the “in-depth approach” leaves aside these circumstances and investigates the frontiers of socialist and radical political economics regardless of how well versed in Marxist theory a typical economist may be. Both levels are necessary, but we need to distinguish clearly so that we know when it is most useful to focus on one or the other. JEL Classification: B24, B51

Economics with a Moral Compass? Welfare Economics: Past, Present, and Future

This conversation between Nobel Laureates Amartya Sen and Angus Deaton, moderated by Annual Review of Economics Editorial Committee Member Tim Besley, focuses on bringing ethical issues into economics, and the implications that this has for the practice and teaching of economics. A video of this interview is available online at https://www.annualreviews.org/r/EconMoralCompass .