Telling Other Stories: Heterodox Critiques of Neoclassical Micro Principles Texts

Abstract

“Part of the (ideological) service (of economics) consists in instructing several hundred thousand students each year. Although gravely inefficient this instruction implants an imprecise but still serviceable set of ideas in the minds of many and perhaps most of those who are exposed to it. They are led to accept what they might otherwise criticize; critical inclinations which might be brought to bear on economic life are diverted to other and more benign fields. And there is great immediate effect on those who presume to guide and speak on economic matters. Although the accepted image of economic society is not the reality, it is what is available. As such it serves as a surrogate for the reality for legislators, civil servants, journalists, television commentators, professional prophets—all, indeed, who must speak, write, or act on economic questions. ” (John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose [1973] p. 7). Currently, more than one million students take principles of economics classes (introductory micro and macroeconomics) annually in the United States. 2 These courses will be the main contact with formal economic theory for most undergraduates 3 and will 1 This paper grew out of a workshop co-sponsored by the Global Development and Environment Institute