Adam Smith Lives!

History of Economics at Liberal Arts Colleges

Last week I spent two days serving as an external reviewer for an economics department in a small Liberal Arts College.  It was fascinating in part because the department is eclectic and the students know and appreciate that.  Also, the college plans to reduce teaching loads by one course in the future and there is a great deal of uncertainty associated with how that change will be effected. Without additional lines, upper division -- topics -- class offerings may be cut.  As at many Liberal Arts Colleges, the economics faculty rarely teach topics classes as it is.  (I taught only required courses for my first six years at my own institution.) 

A couple of findings interested me, in the light of declining offerings in the history of economics: 

We met with about half of their majors, in a voluntary, "drop in" setting.  Almost all made two sorts of comments:  i) since they appreciate learning about context and competing perspectives on economic problems, they'd like to see a regular history of economic thought course offered; ii) they want to see more technical courses offered.

These are usually thought of as substitutes so it was interesting to hear students wanted both.  At least three of the students had been accepted into good PhD programs in economics.  But the comments came from others, too.  It appears these students regard technical training as a complement to, not a substitute for, training about the historical context of economic problems.  This doesn't get us any closer to the question of what to give up for such courses.  But it does bely the sometimes-spouted notion that the history of economic ideas is a specialization for students (and teachers) who can't do the hard technical work of "real" economics.      

Jared Diamond at Severance Hall

This week Jared Diamond pretty much filled Cleveland's beautifully restored Severance Hall, speaking on his recent book, Collapse.  I like "big picture" stories -- lots of entertainment value and just enough good stuff that makes sense.  I've attended several sessions in the past year on Robert Heilbronner to convince me that stories, narrative, style, and big themes have a huge impact on the profession and the reading public, whatever the niggling issues about details of argument and presentation. 

So, Diamond's talk was about why some highly-developed societies, like the Anasazi of the southwest, collapse, while others do not.  It's a story about the environment.  Exogenous environmental change and, then, "choices" made in the face of new constraints.

Missing, in my mind, was any sort of story about institutions that affect the sorts of choices that emerge in the face of environmental challenges.  The question and answer was most telling:  a question about why some countries in the middle East now fare less poorly than others yielded the answer:  they're in the middle of a desert.  Yes, but so are countries that are fare much better.  The thing that varies isn't so much land quality or climate but institutions.

One niggling detail has to be corrected:  So obvious, apparently, it was treated as a throw away line.  What?  Rwanda.  The Rwandan genocide was said to be the fulfillment of Malthus's predictions.  Really?  It seems to me that Malthus argued the opposite.  For Malthus, institutional arrangements matter:  with secure property rights, people could foresee the consequences of their decisions and they would limit family size.  So, crowding (conflict and death) would not be the result for Malthus because people would resort instead to the preventative check to limit births.  David Levy and I have tried to correct this still-widespread misconception of Malthus in our columns at Econlib.  Part 2 is called "Happiness, Progess, and the 'Vanity of the Philosopher'".