It is interesting to note that in the...

It is interesting to note that in the course of the Eurozone-Crisis and the related debate on how to remedy Greece’s plight, a heterodox economist has risen to great prominence within European media discourse. This development has been largely unnoticed by media commentators themselves, who are interested in Yanis Varoufakis primarily as Greece’s newly appointed minister of finance and obviously have a hard time in adequately characterizing Varoufakis’ economic and political approach. Especially in the German-speaking media he is rather crudely portrayed as some “good-looking Marxist” coming up with somehow dubious and unconventional political suggestions.

While such superficiality is regrettable, the underlying question - what motivates somebody to first go into economics and then into politics - is surely legitimate. I am proud to state that I know Yanis Varoufakis’ answers to these questions. This is not because I know Yanis, but rather because he stated his answers very clearly on his blog. Since I think his answers are very good ones, I wanted to share with you the one on going into economics:

_”My initial urge was to study physics but I soon came to the conclusion that the lingua franca of political discourse was economics. Thus, I enrolled at the University of Essex to study the dismal science. However, within weeks of lectures I was aghast at the content of my textbooks and the inane musings of my lecturers. Quite clearly economics was only interested in putting together simplistic mathematical models. Worse still, the mathematics utilised were third rate and, consequently, the economic thinking that emanated from it was atrocious. In short shrift I changed my enrolment from the economics to the mathematics school, thinking that if I am going to be reading mathematics I might as well read proper mathematics.

After graduating from Essex, I moved to the University of Birmingham where I read toward an MSc in Mathematical Statistics. By that stage I was convinced that my escape from economics had been clean and irreversible. How deluded that conviction was! While looking for a thesis topic, I stumbled upon a piece of econometrics (a statistical test of some economic model of industrial disputes) that angered me so much with its methodological sloppiness (which was hidden behind a certain mathematical sophistication) that I set out to demolish it. That was the trap and I fell right into it! From that moment onwards, a series of anti-economic treatises followed, a Phd in… Economics and, naturally, a career in exclusively Economics Departments, in every one of which I enjoyed debunking that which my colleagues considered to be legitimate ‘science’. At the price, that is, of a life which can only be compared to that of an atheist theologian ensconced in a Middle Ages monastery.”_

So far for his motivation to enter economics - his path to politics is slightly more dramatic and shortly described here.

All the Best,

Jakob