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Robin Neill asked: 
 
Is the POST-AUTISTIC ECONOMICS NEWSLETTER a vehicle for the cutting edge of the History of
Economics?
 
BJC opines: I don't know if it is a vehicle. But I certainly think that some of the issues
that they raise touches on concerns that I have had.
 
In particular, they have asked for curricular changes in the way that economics is taught
at the university level, for more broadening, and I think that teaching more history of
thought is one way for that to occur. Their concern with methodological issues also is
encouraging. There are opportunities here.
 
There are some ironies in the PAE revolt, as well. It is my impression that in the UK and
Europe students who major in economics never get any "principles" courses, which is very
different from the U.S. Because of the way their (UK
and Europe) higher education systems are set up, when they go to university students
immediately get taught economics at a higher, more formal level, having decided to
specialize in it. Students end up being technically quite adept but not having much
intuition about how economic reasoning can be used to address real world problems. This
seems to be their complaint.
 
The solution they have hit on, though, though it often involves calls for more applied
courses, also demands perspectives different from neoclassicism. They do so because many
PAE advocates equate neoclassicism with globalization, free markets, and so on. To the
extent that PAE is more correctly viewed as a call for more heterodox studies, and
presumeably of the Post-Keynesian or Marxian or institutionalist kind rather than, say,
Austrian, the solution of a principles course will probably not resonate with its
advocates. Some of the insights one might gain from a principles course might well
directly contradict some of the political views the students hold.
  
 
I don't know how others feel, but I am quite excited about PAE when I think of it as a
pedagogic movement, and less excited when I think of it as a political one. And which one
it is is simply not clear to me. But to offer an direct and forceful answer to Robin's
query, I'd say "maybe."
 
Bruce J. Caldwell 
 
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