What Went Wrong with Economics?

While most economists probably are satisfied with the present state of affairs in economics, there is some dissent. Part of this dissent stems from an uneasiness about the current state of the human race and the failure of economics to say much about it. There are, for example, the problems of possi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American Economist (New York, N.Y. 1960) N.Y. 1960), 1986-04, Vol.30 (1), p.5-12
Main Author: Boulding, Kenneth E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capital structure
Economic systems
Economic theory
Economics
Epistemology
Evolutionary economics
Factors
Food
Household consumption
Mathematics
Pathology
Post Keynesian economics
Social systems
Trends
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Summary:While most economists probably are satisfied with the present state of affairs in economics, there is some dissent. Part of this dissent stems from an uneasiness about the current state of the human race and the failure of economics to say much about it. There are, for example, the problems of possible nuclear war and the ideological conflict between capitalism and communism. There also is the failure of economics as it relates to the Third World and to the pathology of the international and nation financial systems. The finance problem is somewhat related to the problem of unemployment and inflation. The real world is huge and diverse and is not epistemologically homogeneous; the same methods do not apply equally well over the entire field, but have to be tailored to the system being investigated. Whatever the economic system is, it is a structure in space-time and so is evolutionary. Perhaps the real villain in economics is the obsession with algebraic, nontopological mathematics that has forced mainline economics into a dead end.
ISSN:0569-4345
2328-1235
DOI:10.1177/056943458603000101