Anti-Mankiw

Elsewhere on the World Wide Web: Some UMass comrades have revived the internet tradition of the grudge blog with this interesting new blog, with the Stakhanovite goal of refuting (tho thankfully not fisking) every post Greg Mankiw makes. It's an ambitious goal, especially since the average wordcount ratio of an anti post to its underlying Mankiw post is running around 50:1. But they're managing so far. You should read it. And if anyone wants to take a swing at the pinata, I think they may still be looking for new contributors.

So why aren't I contributing? Mainly because time is scarce and I am very lazy, so blogging-wise I'm tapped out just keeping up a trickle of content here. But also, to be honest, because I have some qualms about the anti-ness of the left in economics generally. Anti-Mankiw is a great project, and I have nothing but admiration for the students who walked out of Mankiw's class. But there's a certain assumption here that we on the left have a well-developed alternative economics, which the Mankiws of the world are ignoring or suppressing. If only that were true.

Right now I'm teaching macro, and I’m presenting basically the same material as everyone else. ISLM, AS/AD, and their open economy equivalents. How come? Well, partly because I feel a certain professional duty. Students signed up for a course in intermediate macroeconomics, not in J.W. Mason Thought. (That will be next semester.) But mainly because it’s the path of least resistance. I don’t know any good textbook that presents the fundamentals of macroeconomics from a genuinely Keynesian or radical perspective. And working up a course by myself would be vastly more work, and I don't think I could do it justice. A downward sloping AD curve, let's say, is absurd. There's no real economy on earth in which the main effect of deflation is to stimulate demand via a real balance or "Keynes" effect. It pains me to even put it on the board. But what's the counterhegemonic model of inflation I should be teaching in its place?

It’s not just me. I know a number of people who are unapologetic Marxists in their own work, yet when they teach undergraduate macroeconomics, they use Blanchard or some similarly conventional text. It’s a structural problem. I don’t mean to defend Mankiw, but in some ways I think those of us on the left of the profession are more to blame for the state of undergraduate economics education. We spend too much time on critiques of the mainstream, and not nearly enough developing a systematic alternative. Some people criticize radical economists for just talking to each other, but personally I think we don’t talk to each other nearly enough.

The anti-Mankiw that's needed, it seems to me, isn't a critique, but an alternative; as long as we're arguing with him, he still gets to decide what we're talking about. That's one reason I prefer to spend my time debating people like Krugman, DeLong, John Quiggin, and Nick Rowe, who I respect and learn from even when I don't agree with them. (Another reason is that attention is a precious resource and I prefer giving the bit I get to allocate to people and ideas that deserve it.)

It’s true that the ideological policing in economics is very tight—but mainly at the top end, and even there mostly not at the level of undergraduate teaching. As far as I can tell, most places nobody cares what you do in the classroom; there’s already plenty of space for alternatives at schools that aren't Harvard. But people mostly aren’t using that space. In my experience, even when people want to bring a “radical” perspective to undergraduate econ, that means presenting the mainstream models and then dissecting  them, which preserves the mainstream view as the default or starting point, when it doesn't just leaves students confused. "Radical" economics almost never seems to mean simply teaching economics the way we radicals think it should be taught.

So yes, Occupy Mankiw, by all means. But maybe we should also think more about the classrooms we’re already occupying. Or as a graffito that should be familiar to the male fraction of anti-Mankiw says:

Start your own hit band or stop bitching

EDIT: If anyone reading this wants to suggest good models or resources for what an undergrad economics course ought to look like, I'd be thrilled to hear them.

FURTHER EDIT: Lots of suggestions. I need to walk back a little: There are more good alternatives to Mankiw  & co. than you'd guess reading this post. But the key point is still, we need to move past critique and develop our own positive views. As long we're responding to him, he's setting the terms of the conversation. Read about, say,  Paul Sweezy in the 1940s -- he was so admired not because he had such a cutting critique, but because he so clearly and confidently offered an alternative. (And because he was so charming and good-looking, but that sort of goes with it, I think.) We'll be getting somewhere when, instead of rushing to rebut everything Mankiw says, we can say, "Oh, is that guy still writing? Well, forget about him -- here's the good stuff."

So, the good stuff.

I should have mentioned two excellent macro texts that, while they are too advanced for the students I'm teaching now, really comprehensively describe the state of the art alternative approaches to macro: Michl and Foley's Growth and Distribution and Lance Taylor's Reconstructing Macroeconomics. If, like me, you;re more more interested in short-term dynamics than growth models, you might get a little more out of the Taylor book, but both are very good.

In comments, NKlein suggests Godley and Lavoie's Monetary Economics: An Integrated Approach, which I know other people recommend but I'm afraid I haven't read (tho it's on my Kindle), and mentions that Randy Wray and Bill Mitchell are working on a new textbook. I believe Wray currently teaches undergraduate macro at Kansas City using Keynes' General Theory as the primary textbook, which is not a terrible idea (tho it would probably depend on the students.)

A lot of people like Understanding Capitalism, by Sam Bowles, Richard Edwards and Frank Roosevelt. Sam's microeconomics textbook is also supposed to be good, if, god forbid, you have to teach that. (But the orthodox-heterodox divide doesn't really exist in micro, I don't think.)

Meanwhile, over on anti-Mankiw itself, Garth suggested -- more or less simultaneously with this post -- Steve Cohn's Reintroducing Macroeconomics, and linked to a long list of heterodox texts. I'm only familiar with a few of the books on the list, altho most of the ones I do know are grab-bags of critical essays, which is not quite what I'm looking for. But clearly there's a lot out there.