I don't teach a 'traditional' economics principles course, even though I teach two papers at first-year university level. One of my papers teaches business economics, so focuses on business applications and has more game theory, pricing and competitive strategy than you would see in a principles paper. It also uses the CORE textbook, which is not a traditional principles text (but is also not designed explicitly to teach business economics, so a lot of what we do is outside of the textbook). The other paper I teach is Economics and Society, which is more of a survey paper, covering economic policy using microeconomic principles. It still isn't a principles paper though, as we do a lot of things that are well outside of a principles curriculum, like property rights, the economics of education, health economics, and the economics of social security. It is more like a welfare economics paper, but without the heavy maths that welfare economics usually entails.
Given that I don't teach a traditional course, and don't follow textbooks too closely, I am always on the lookout for new ideas on how to reframe parts of my papers. So, I was interested to read this 2020 article by Inge Røpke (Aalborg University), published in the journal Ecological Economics (ungated earlier version here). Røpke proposes a new structure and content for Econ101, with a focus on sustainability and a grounding in ecological and heterodox economics.
This long quote from the conclusion of the article captures the main ideas:
The proposed knowledge structure involves a delimitation of economics with a focus on provisioning: how do humans make a living? This provides a specific cut through the totality, which is always both biophysical and social. The fundamental thought patterns of the approach include the bridging of the structure-actor interplay and related concepts of institutions and power, conceptualization of dynamics based on evolutionary thinking and systems thinking, and the idea that agents’ own reflexive understandings are an integral part of development. Turning to the substantive issues of economics, the introductory topics include thermodynamics, ecology, the energy history of humans, basic ideas from earth system science, and the idea of social metabolism. Provisioning is introduced as a broad concept that captures all sorts of contributions of goods and services to the real cake that is available for consumption and investment. Provisioning is seen as a human activity where the practitioners provide the result, while ownership of the tools involved is not considered a productive force. Due to the condition of incommensurability, the size of the real cake cannot be measured in any meaningful way. As the present distribution of the cake is based on a long history, it is necessary to give a brief outline of the emergence and development of capitalist institutions. This should include the importance of property relations for distribution, the emergence of markets and their dependence on government, the changing character of market participants, the dynamics and instability of capitalism, as well as the global reach of capitalism. Turning to distribution, it is important to emphasize the lack of connection between the individuals’ efforts to provide the cake and their access to appropriate parts of it. Access is achieved through conventions related to care, through rights and purchasing power, which is acquired as salaries and, even more, in the form of rent related to property institutions. Prices serve as a distributional mechanism, but cannot be considered relevant measures of value. Finally, the introduction to governance challenges rigid means-ends rationality, but acknowledges the need for making the world understandable and governable through various devices. Biophysical and social measures are preferable to monetary assessments, and deliberative methods are promoted as means to provide inputs to political decision-making. Regarding actual strategies, the need for conscious construction of markets is emphasized as well as a navigational approach to sustainability transitions.
This knowledge structure can be used as a framework and basis for adding insights from both heterodox and mainstream economic thinking, but it replaces the mainstream focus on market exchange as the key topic of economics and it dismisses, for instance, the concepts of equilibrium, optimality, efficiency, choice between given alternatives, and money as a measure of value. Such concepts and the related neoclassical framework can be introduced at a relatively late stage as a way in which various actors perceive the world.
I'm open to some (but not all) of the ideas that Røpke is suggesting. In fact, some of the things she suggests are already embedded within my papers. However, in the article she critiques such an incremental approach, as well as the idea that heterodox approaches should be seen as simply an extension or counterpoint to mainstream views.
However, while Røpke may be able to convince individual lecturers, that may not be enough. Making a big change to an introductory course cannot be done in isolation, and will require buy-in from across a department. Lecturers in intermediate microeconomics are not going to be happy when some of the assumed knowledge about market equilibrium is absent from their incoming students' first-year experience. Rebuilding the foundations of the economics curriculum in introductory principles necessitates changes across the economics major. Needless to say, that is a huge undertaking, and may not attract universal buy-in from all members of the faculty. That isn't a reason not to make these changes, just a statement of the difficulty of doing so.
Also, it would be interesting to know whether there is sufficient demand from employers for this alternative approach. Some employers no doubt expect economics graduates to have been trained in a conventional, neoclassical framework, with some additional perspectives set alongside it. I imagine that is what the banks and finance companies who employ a large proportion of our graduates expect. Would they be equally happy with a student who has a heterodox foundation? I honestly have no idea, but it would be worth exploring this before embarking on a major overhaul of the curriculum.
Traditional economics principles has undergone some significant changes in recent years. The CORE textbook is one example, although whether CORE is an improvement is contested, while others believe that it does not go far enough. My own view is that a radical revision of introductory economics may be unnecessary or unwelcome. A continuing process of improvement, incorporating further insights from new institutional economics, game theory, behavioural economics, experimental economics, ecological economics and other fields, is probably the optimal approach.
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