Know What You’re Professing

In an op-ed at the New York Times today, Know What You’re Protesting, Greg Mankiw replied to the November 2 walk-out of his Econ 10 lecture. Mankiw's second reaction, after nostalgia, to the walkout was "sadness at how poorly informed the Harvard protesters seemed to be." The Sandwichman's reaction to Mankiw's reaction is astonishment at how poorly informed the Harvard PROFESSORS seem to be. They are poorly informed in the sense of what they think they know that just ain't so. Some examples are Edward L. Glaeser, Lawrence F. Katz and N. Gregory Mankiw.

A few years back Mankiw commented on Albert Einstein's suggestion that shorter working hours would enable more people to be employed. Mankiw dismissed Einstein's economic views as "about as well thought out as my views on quantum mechanics." What he appears to not have known was that John Maynard Keynes took a similar view of the matter. At EconoSpeak, Peter Dorman gives a good description of exactly what is wrong with introductory economics courses. Dorman points out "there is a central narrative at the introductory level," which "presents a system of perfectly competitive markets" yet "[m]ost of the interesting and important work in economics is about... deviations" from that central narrative such as "externalities. behavioral anomalies, sticky prices, etc."

I think this criticism is correct, as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. It seems to me that the perfectly competitive market narrative is a stand-in for and derivative from a more explicitly elitist narrative which only becomes clear from an examination of the 18th century ideological context from which the competitive market narrative evolved. That is to say, it is not just any old narrative; it is a theodicy (a "vindication of divine providence in view of the existence of evil").

Sandwichman is perhaps using an analogy? The market narrative is like a theodicy? No. Sandwichman is referring to documented statements of principle:

Every religious mind views and adores the Providence of God, which has thus appeared for us, by providing sufficient work for the poor, and wages for their work.

Three cheers for the Providence of God but it needs to be kept in mind that the "evil" in question is the suffering of "the poor" through unemployment, low wages, harsh working conditions and a progressive loss of control over their own lives. Here, I have to agree with Mankiw, or at least with the headline on his op-ed piece, "know what you are protesting." It is not merely Mankiw's teaching of introductory Economics nor, as Peter Dorman points out, the customary narrative of the competitive market that needs to be questioned. It is the antiquated, elitist and clandestine theodicy from which that market narrative springs that needs to be exposed and repudiated.