This is the talk based on the paper for the previous post. I add one additional thought to what I published then: that since economics is now down to just 4% of most business degrees, that heterodox economists should complete the march to zero by jumping ship and joining Accounting departments. There they could develop a “Monetary Economics for Accountants” unit that would replace the standard Introductory Economics subject required for accreditation as an accountant.
This paper began by chronicling the decline of economics within business degrees which coincided with its rise to ideological and political might prior to the economic crisis of 2007. Today, though under attack outside the academy as well as within it, it is as hardened a Citadel as ever to non-orthodox thought internally, and it is still pursuing the same woeful tactics that led to its dimunition from 40% of a business degree to 4% over the last 40 years.
Why not finish the job? Why not deliberately finish what Neoclassical economists have achieved by accident?
The only factor maintaining a toehold for economics in business degrees today is the fact that one unit of economics is compulsory for the accreditation of accountants. What Neoclassically dominated economics serve up for this is a pathetic remnant of its once three-year-long instruction, with the focus weighted overwhelmingly towards the moneyless, barter-economy microeconomic model of supply and demand.
This rump has driven out room for any nuances even within Neoclassical economics, let alone the critiques and alternatives we have developed. Most of the time of heterodox economists as academic teachers is reduced to servicing this pap, while the options they once had in the 70s have long since been sacrificed, to make way for yet more econometrics for the dwindling tribe of pure Economics students.
The Bad Ship Economics is likely to continue losing the battle for the hearts and minds of other Business academics. UWS (and ACU’s) closure of their economics degrees will not be the last. If we continue attempting to survive within what’s left of Economics Departments, then the odds are that we will go down not merely with them but before them, as they fight to keep the core of Neoclassical instruction alive, and as counter-revolution against heterodox thought continues in the public sphere.
At the same time, Post Keynesian economists have developed a strongly monetary, macroeconomically oriented analysis, in which double-entry bookkeeping plays an essential role. This can be seen in the work of the Modern Monetary Theory school (Wray 2003; Fullwiler, Kelton et al. 2012), as well as my own (Keen 2010; Keen 2013), and that of Dirk Bezemer (Bezemer 2010), Michael Hudson (Hudson 2004), Richard Werner (Werner 2011) and a growing band of younger researchers. It is also integral to the Open Source monetary macroeconomic modelling program Minsky that I have developed (see Figure 11).
Figure 12: Double-entry bookkeeeping plays an essential role in Minsky
Thus though we have been driven to near extinction within economics departments, our approach to economics is far more compatible with what accountants actually do, and how they think, than is Neoclassical economics. And paradoxically, the one force sustaining Neoclassically-dominated Economics Departments today is this institutional demand for economics from Accounting accreditation bodies.
Why not jump ship and work with the Accountants instead? Why not develop a “Monetary Economics for Accountants” unit that could be taught from within Accounting Departments, and given accreditation by those same Accounting standards bodies as an alternative to the “Introduction to Economics” (or “Economics for Business Decision Making“) subjects that Economics Departments currently serve up?
Such a subject is tailor-made for Post Keynesian economists to teach. Though there is still work to do to fully combine various approaches, such as the MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) and MCT (Monetary Cicuit Theory), we have already developed much of the logic—and we now have technology in the form of the Minsky program that could be used today to build a rival and interesting one semester subject for accountants on economics. It would be one in which accounting concepts would play an integral role, rather than being completely ignored—as they are in the welter of supply and demand curves that Economics departments currently serve up.
In other words, rather than continuing with the futile attempt to wrest control of the sinking ship of Economics from its incompetent Neoclassical helmsmen, why not instead jump ship and join the far more sturdy ship Accounting instead? Then, while we develop from a position of support, we could let the Neoclassical purists in charge of the sinking ship of Economics complete the course they’ve been unwittingly following anyway—to the bottom of the academic ocean.