First of all, I would like to point...
First of all, I would like to point our European readers to the EuroMemorandum 2016 petition, which “analyses recent economic developments in Europe and emphasizes the strong need for an alternative economic policy that is based on the principles of democratic participation, social justice and environmental sustainability.” The deadline for supporting the EuroMemorandum 2016 ends today - so in case you have not yet undersigned the EuroMemorandum you can do so here. In a similar vein, today’s Newsletter also features a statement on UK Economic Policy under the header the “cracks begin to show” published by a group of concerned and critical economists from EREP network (‘Economists for Rational Economic Policies’).
I also wanted to let you know that the AEA (‘American Economic Association’) is currently running a survey among its members aiming at an evaluation of their recently founded set of new journals. In case you are a member of the AEA, you can use this survey to protest against the exclusionary orientation in AEA-journals, which not only neglect heterodox approaches but also other important branches of research, like history of economic thought or economic methodology. Thereby, it is interesting to note that the exclusion of the two subjects was not intended, but rather emerged spontanously. In June 2013 the homepage of the AEA still stated that the newly founded American Economic Journals “will accept articles appropriate to its respective subject division in such areas as: history of economic thought . . .” , a remark that has by now disappeared from it’s website (thanks go to Kevin Hoover for pointing this out).
Operating in the background of this development is indeed nothing more than the usual routine of mainstream economics to locate these subjects outside the economic discipline as emphasized by David Colander, who thankfully provided some further background knowledge on the subject.
“The policy [of the new journals] has retrogressed from when the journals were started, although I suspect they never really took history of thought seriously. I was on the AEA journal committee that decided on adding the journals and I encouraged the committee that they have a journal devoted to issues such as methodology and history of thought. I was the only supporter for that idea, and it went nowhere. But I did get the committee to agree that all the journals would be open to both history of thought and methodology. But that focus was quickly lost since the editors they appointed to head the journals, and the editorial boards, had no background in history of thought or methodology.”
While this development might not come as a surprise to you, there is always some worth in exploring the practical aspects underlying the narrowness in current economic thought.
All the best,
Jakob