Ten Principles of Feminist Economics

I've previously referenced expositions of principles of institutional economics and principles of heterodox economics. Geoff Schneider and Jean Shackelford have put forth some principles of feminist economics, also. Since in keeping with an antireductionist view the first principle is that there is no such thing as a definitive list of principles, I will not reproduce the list here.

Some Principles Of Heterodox Economics

1. Methodology (rather than just method) is important to understanding economics.
2. Human actors are social and less than perfectly rational, driven by habits, routines, culture and tradition
3. Economic systems are complex, evolving and unpredictable - and consequently equilibrium models should be viewed sceptically.
4. While theories of the individual are useful, so are theories of aggregate or collective outcomes. Further, neither the individual nor the aggregate can be understood in isolation from the other.
5. History and time are important (reflecting (3)).
6. All economic theories are fallible and, reflecting (4), there is contemporary relevance of the history of thought to understanding economics.
7. Pluralism, i.e. multiple perspectives, is advocated (following on from (3) and (6)).
8. Formal mathematical and statistical methods should be removed from their perceived position as the supreme method - but not abandoned - and supplemented by other methods and data types.
9. Facts and values are inseperable.
10. Power is an important determinant of economic outcomes.

-- Andrew Mearman (2007). "Teaching Heterodox Economics Concepts", The Economics Network (June)

(I previously posted a quotation of ten principles of institutional economics.)

Principles of Neoliberalism

Some of these strike me as too absurd (e.g., 7, 9) to bother refuting:

1. "...contrary to classical liberal doctrine, [the neoliberal] vision of the good society will triumph only if it becomes reconciled to the fact that the conditions for its existence must be constructed and will not come about 'naturally' in the absence of concerted political effort and organization...
2. ...'the market' is posited to be an information processor more powerful than any human brain, but essentialy patterned on brain/computational metaphors... The market always surpasses the state's ability to process information...
3. ...for purposes of public understanding and sloganeering, market society must be treated as a 'natural' and inexorable state of humankind...
4. A primary ambition of the neoliberal project is to redefine the shape and functions of the state, not to destroy it...
5. ...Neoliberals treat... politics as if it were a market and promoting an economic theory of democracy...
6. Neoliberals extol freedom as trumping all other virtues, but the definition of freedom is recoded and heavily edited within their framework... Freedom can only be 'negative' for neoliberals (in the sense of Isaiah Berlin)...
7. ...capital has a natural right to flow freely across national borders. (The free flow of labor enjoys no similar right.)...
8. ...pronounced inequality of economic resources and political rights [is] not ... an unfortunate by-product of capitalism, but as a necessary functional characteristic of their ideal market system...
9. Corporations can do no wrong, or at least they are not be blamed if they do...
10. The market (suitably reengineered and promoted) can always provide solutions to problems seemingly caused by the market in the first place...
11. The neoliberals have struggled from the outset to make their political/economic theories do dual service as a moral code..."

-- Philip Mirowski, "Postface", in The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective (edited by Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe), Harvard University Press (2009)

(I've miscategorized this post since neoliberalism encompasses more than economics.)

10 Principles of Institutional Economics

• Economics is about social provisioning, not merely choices and scarcity.
• Both scarcity and wants are socially defined and created.
• Economic systems are human creations; no particular economic system is "natural".
• Ecological literacy (economy-ecology interface) is essential to economics.
• Valuation is a social process.
• The government defines the economy; laissez faire capitalism is an oxymoron.
• The history of economic thought is critical to the study of "basic principles" of economics.
• Economic theory ("logical economics") and real world economics are often very different things.
• Race, gender, and class shape economic processes, outcomes, and policies in the real world economy.
• There are many types of economists who do not agree on many things. This reflects the fact that economics is not "value free" and ideology shapes our analyses and conclusions as economists.

From: Janet Knoedler, Jennifer Long, Reynold Nesiba, Janice Peterson, Geoff Schneider, James Swaney, and Daniel Underwood (1998). "10 Things for Economic Pedagogy", Association for Evolutionary Thought, Western Social Science Association, Denver Colorado. (See here.)

The Sociology Of Mainstream And Non-Mainstream Economics

"I admit that my criteria of falsifiability does not lead to an unambiguous classification. Indeed, it is impossible to decide, by analyzing its logical form, whether a system of statements is a conventional system of irrefutable implicit definitions, or whether it is a system which is empirical in my sense; that is, a refutable system. Yet this only shows that my criterion of demarcation cannot be applied immediately to a system of statements - a fact I have already pointed out... The question whether a given system should as such be regarded as a conventionalist or an empirical one is therefore misconceived. Only with reference to the methods applied to a theoretical system is it at all possible to ask whether we are dealing with a conventionalist or an empirical theory. The only way to avoid conventionalism is by taking a decision: the decision not to apply its methods. We decide that if our system is threatened we will never save it by any kind of conventionalist stratagem." - Karl Popper (1968): 81-82

John Davis (2009) distinguished between two ways of dividing economists up: based on the content of their theories and based on more sociological criteria of citation networks, conference attendance, professional society membership, textbooks, etc. I think Davis' taxonomy remains of interest even if one does not agree with his views on trend in the economics profession.

Davis distinguishes between orthodox and heterodox economics on the basis of the substances of their theories. In the last column of Table 1, I have listed some distinguishing precepts of orthodox economics. The last three precepts roughly correspond to the opposite of the distinguishing features, according to Davis, of heterodox economics around 1980. I think one could also call orthodox economics "neoclassical". Heterodox economics rejects some combination of the precepts of orthodox economics. For Davis, mainstream economics is a sociological category. The first two columns of Table list some examples. Mainstream heterodox economics may become orthodox in time, with game theory perhaps already having succeeded, at least partially. At any rate, mainstream heterodox economists have access to the leading journals, a presence in the graduate schools generally rated to be the top, and so on.

Table 1: Divisions Among Economists

Non-Mainstream Economists	Mainstream Economists
Heterodox Economics		Orthodox Economics
Marxism Radical political economy Institutionalism Post Keynesianism Austrian school Regulation schools Circuitists Feminist economics	Game theory(?) Behavioral economics Experimental economics Evolutionary economics Neuroeconomics Complexity economics	Formal models Atomistic, non-socially embedded individuals Equilibrium models set out of historical time Methodological individualism, social structures explained by aggregation over individuals

Both mainstream and non-mainstream heterodox economics can be broken down further. This can be seen in the table. The first two columns each contain more than one school of thought as an exemplar of that category. Davis makes further schematic distinctions. One is between an inward or outward orientation of heterodox economists. Another is among differents ways schools of economists can become heterodox. With these distinctions, Davis argues that the content and understanding of mainstream, non-mainstream, orthodox, and heterodox economics has been evolving over time.

Davis argues that non-mainstream economists should work harder to engage mainstream heterodox economists and that mainstream economists are more open to theoretical innovation than some non-mainstream economists claim. Without such engagement, he thinks, mainstream economists might be excessively conservative, with consequences that mainstream economists will continue to fail to incorporate worthwhile insights of non-mainstream heterodox economists. In the present historical conjuncture, I think, the odds of mainstream economics being suddenly swept away have increased. If so, Davis's strategy might be unnecessary, though I am not very optimistic either way.

By the way, I could have cited previous work by Davis for this post. I wanted to mention that Davis's is the second essay I've read in Fullbrook (2009). McFarling (2009), which is at least a stretch for me, is the first essay I read in this book. So far, I find in the little I've read in this book a broad agreement that heterodox economists reject the orthodox overemphasis on social explanations from atomistic, non-socially embedded individuals.

References

• John B. Davis (2009) "The Nature of Heterodox Economics", in Fullbrook (2009)
• Edward Fullbrook (editor) (2009) Ontology and Economics: Tony Lawson and His Critics, Routledge
• Bruce R. McFarling (2009) "Finding a Critical Pragmatism in Reorienting Economics", in Fullbrook (2009)
• Karl R. Popper (1968) The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Revised edition, Harper

Pasinetti's Principles

Luigi Pasinetti, in his new book, Keynes and the Cambridge Keynesians: A "Revolution in Economics" to be Accomplished, summarizes what he takes to be characteristic features of the Cambridge school:

1. Reality (and not simply abstract rationality) as the starting point of economic theory.
2. Economic logic with internal consistency (and not only formal rigour).
3. Malthus and the Classics (not Walras and the Marginalists) as the major inspiring source in the history of economic thought.
4. Non-ergodic (in place of stationary, timeless) economic systems.
5. Causality vs. Interdependence.
6. Macroeconomics before Microeconomics.
7. Disequilibrium and instability (not equilibrium) as the normal state of the industrial economies.
8. Necessity of finding an appropriate analytical framework for dealing with technical change and economic growth.
9. A strong, deeply felt social concern.