TheCuttingEdgeofEconomics.docVIP

The Cutting Edge of Economics David C. Colander, Richard P.F. Holt, and J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. Chapter 1 This book is about the economics profession, or more precisely, the cutting edge of the economics profession. Economics is currently at a turning point; it is changing from a static approach to understanding, in which deductive reasoning is the key method used, to a complexity approach to understanding, in which inductive and deductive methods are used simultaneously, and the full complexity of the system is acknowledged and dealt with. The change is just beginning, but the groundwork is currently being laid. This book is about that groundwork and those economists who are developing it. They are the cutting edge of economics. Those who are doing cutting edge work are researchers who are pushing and testing the boundaries of the profession in such a way that it draws the attention of the elite in the profession. The cutting edge has the potential of changing mainstream economics and ultimately what is considered the orthodoxy. To understand the role, influence and nature of cutting edge work in economics requires understanding the profession and how new ideas evolve and affect it. In our view that understanding can best be gained by looking at the economics profession as a complex system. Complex systems cannot be understood from assumed first principles; they can only be understood through the process of change that underlies them. In the same way, the economics profession can best be understood by the process of change that characterizes it. Most previous studies of the economics profession have tended to take a static view of the profession; they see it as an unchanging entity, in a type of equilibrium. That’s not the way we see it; we see the profession as a dynamic, constantly changing entity, never in equilibrium; we see the economics profession as a self-reproducing complex system of interacting ideas. Getting a handle on such a dynamic entity and conveyi