Mainstream economics often overlooks heterodox ideas, risking intellectual honesty and open dialogue vital for academic freedom and innovative economic research.
My favorite item in this issue of the Heterodox Economics Newsletter is, somewhat self-servingly ;-), our job ad for a new position associated with the Institute for Socio-Economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. If you wanna work with us at one of the homes of the Heterodox Economics Newsletter, please consider applying. Also, please consider forwarding this opportunity to potentially interested candidates. Thanks ;-)
Heterodox Economics Newsletter
Der Heterodox Economics Newsletter wird herausgegeben von Jakob Kapeller und erscheint im dreiwöchentlichen Rhythmus mit Neuigkeiten aus der wissenschaftlichen Community multiparadigmatischer ökonomischer Ansätze. Der Newsletter richtet sich an einen Kreis von mehr als 7.000 Empfänger*innen und zählt schon weit mehr als 250 Ausgaben.
However, aside from this and a series of other interesting job postings, this issue also contains two noteworthy calls for support: one ties in with my short report in the last editorial on the troubling news of endangered academic freedom and self-governance in Japan (see here) and features a petition that allows scholar to express their protest in the face of these developments. Another one is issued by the EuroMemo-group, focuses on Europe and European economic policies and calls for a fundamental reorientation of the latter in the face of multiple crises. Again, there is the opportunity to support the report with your signature (see here for details).
Interestingly, most of the relevant information we obtain for the Heterodox Economics Newsletter neatly fits into the rough ‚categories’ defined about two decades ago. I admit I enjoy the simple fact that a deductive scheme once conceived is able to effectively sort information for such a long period. Not only because it makes our work easier, but also because – as we know from textbooks on qualitative research methodology – it is a somewhat improbable case given that deductive schemes for coding information notoriously fall short when being confronted with a diversity of empirical material and, hence, typically has to be adapted over time.
Nonetheless, and in line with the textbooks, there are rare reoccuring observations that do not fit into into one of these preconceived categories. One such reoccuring observation, that pops up every year or so, relates to contributions in mainstream economics that obviously or implicitly build on heterodox ideas, but reframe and embed them in a way that makes them more digestable to mainstream colleagues – which often implies to eliminate or camouflage the heterodox origins of an argument. And indeed, only recently I mentioned the example of a paper in AEJ: Macroeconomics that explicitly builds on the post-Keynesian notion of hystereses, that is, a macroeconomic version of path dependence, but makes only minimal references to post Keynesian scholarship.
Now, what I consider much less neat is the fact that this paper does in no way cite or acknowledge the work of Ole Peters, Alex Adamou and colleagues on ergodicity economics (which in my humble opinion can be considered as a variant of heterodox economics very close to evolutionary approaches), who have reiterated this argument for several years by now (e.g. here or here). Moreover, they even actively aimed to enter the respective mainstream discourse although with a general, critical underpinning. While I cannot say, whether the ignorance towards the contributions of ergodicity economics is due this displayed critical attitude or sinmply a consequence the authors’ unwillingness to thoroughly assess the originality of their own contribution, such ignorance is indeed a reoccuring pattern in mainstream discourse. This is a pity as it undermines serious and open-minded mutual engagement and signals a strange form of intellectual dishonesty, that is truly disappointing.
All the best,
