Bill Mitchell — Economics curriculum is needed to work against selfishness and for altruism

It is Wednesday and so just some snippets. I have written about the behavioural impacts that studying mainstream economics, particularly the microeconomics component can have on students as they progress through their studies. I have observed sort of nice young people entering first-year and by later years, become arrogant, self-opinionated and delusional jerks. This phenomenon is particularly prominent if they go onto to do postgraduate level studies. It is well documented. The way mainstream economics is taught builds on anti-social attitudes that might already be present in students who choose to undertake this sort of training. The curriculum matters a lot. In that context, our next macroeconomics textbook (see below) will, in my view, actively work against any predisposition towards selfishness and against altruism, while still providing students with a first-class, technical education in how the monetary system operates....

Also

The final publication of our new Macroeconomics textbook (Mitchell, Wray and Watts) by Macmillan Palgrave will be February 2019.

We are presently working with Macmillan’s editors on the final version to clear up outstanding issues. It has been a mammoth task, much harder than writing a stand-alone monograph. But we are in the final stages now and the outcome will be a two-year (University-level) sequence in Macroeconomics that is built from foundations up by the developments we have made in Modern Monetary Theory.

It doesn’t just mention MMT. The pedagogy is core MMT – the first time a 2-year sequence of this type will become available....

Woo hoo!

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Economics curriculum is needed to work against selfishness and for altruismBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia