Has the Nobel prize committee been ignoring the “Big Questions” in awarding the economics prize? What are these big questions, and why does it seem the discipline at large ignores them as well? These questions form the basis of this conversation between EconTalk host Russ Roberts and returning guest Branko Milanovic.
Let’s hear what you have to say in response to this fascinating conversation. Share your thoughts in the comments section, and/or use our prompts to spark your own conversation offline.
1- What is the nature of Milanovic’s criticism of current research in economics? What does he mean when he says that economics is “the only social science that does not really relate in a sustained way with its origins?”
2- What ARE the big questions? What have we learned (or not learned) from them? What are some “big questions” Roberts and Milanovic did not mention in their conversation, and what might we seek to learn from these questions?
3- How might the work of Adam Smith illuminate how someone might go about trying to answer these big questions? (Consider also Roberts’s reference to Adam Ferguson‘s notion of “stumbling on solutions.”)
4- In what ways do Milanovic and Roberts suggest that literature can help us understand the big questions of economics? What are some titles you would suggest for this purpose, and what is it you think we can learn from them?
4- The conversation turns to the difficult question of slavery- specifically, whether it was irrelevant or essential to the success of the American economy? What do Roberts and Milanovic suggest we need to learn about this question?
READER COMMENTS
Cobey Williamson
Dec 31 2020 at 9:53am
Since Friedman and Galbraith, but particularly Keynes, the field of economics has completely turned its back to the singular purpose for its existence – determining how to sustainably allocate the finite resources of the Earth in the most equitable manner as to create the greatest social welfare.
John Alcorn
Jan 2 2021 at 7:28pm
Stimulating questions!
1. Do other social sciences “relate in a sustained way with [their] origins”? Psychology (particularly experimental psychology) and physical anthropology (the study of how we became human) don’t; instead, they focus on empirical research programs, and on conceptual refinement. (I take an outsider interest in the two fields.) Social science began as ‘moral philosophy,’ and then branched into academic disciplines because specialization and division of labor increase knowledge. “History,” too, has become a specialized field. Occasionally, interdisciplinary thinkers perceive missed connections, and create fresh, productive conversation among disciplines.
2. EconTalk’s archive of topics is as good a guide as any to what are the Big Questions.
3. Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson generally answer Big Questions by asking four more specific questions: 1. What do individuals do? (Identify behaviors.) 2. Why do individuals do what they do? (Identify motives and beliefs.) 3. What social patterns are there? (Identify social outcomes of individual behaviors.) 4. Why do social outcomes differ from individual motivations? (Identify social mechanisms; for example, the market and the invisible hand.)
4. A poignant, insightful story of fateful allocation of a scarce resource (a core issue in economics) may be found in Ovid’s rendering of an episode from the epic cycle of the Greeks: the Contention of Ajax and Ulysses for Achilles’ armor (Metamorphoses, XII 612 – XII 398). (Full disclosure: I have written an essay about this, published in Science & Society, 1994.)
5. I defer to Thomas Sowell’s brilliant, deep essay, “The Real History of Slavery,” (Chapter 3, Black Rednecks & White Liberals, 2005). An audio recording is available gratis online here.
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