Institute for New Economic Thinking Launches Project to Reform Undergraduate Syllabus

 

by The Institute for... on November 11, 2013

 

 

Blogger Ref Link  http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics

 

 

 

In response to widespread discontent among students, employers, and university teachers, a project to create a new core curriculum for economics was launched at a seminar hosted by HM Treasury today. The CORE curriculum project, funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, convened the meeting, which was attended by academics, policymakers, business leaders, and students from around the world.
CORE stands for “Curriculum Open-access Resources in Economics”. The project provides a new approach to the design, content and way of teaching the core economics curriculum for undergraduates. The CORE project’s first task will be to deliver a pilot of a new first-year undergraduate “Introduction to Economics” course, to be taught in participating universities during the 2014-2015 academic year. Intermediate level Microeconomics and Macroeconomics courses are also in preparation, and will be piloted from 2015 onwards.
The CORE project will produce open access on-line resources, including e-book course material for students with interactive content including diagrams, data and videos. It is being developed by an international team of academics under the leadership of Professor Wendy Carlin of the Department of Economics, University College London, with technical support from Azim Premji University in Bangalore. The course materials, plus supporting teaching materials, will be available at no cost to participating institutions. Instructors will be free to adapt them to their local needs.
“The pressure for change from students, faculty, business and policy makers, along with new developments in economics, makes this an auspicious time to seek improvements in what economics students learn, and how they learn it," Professor Carlin says.
The CORE curriculum will equip students to understand how the economy has evolved and how it works by bringing advances in economics research over the past three decades, lessons from economic history, and the comparative experience of different countries into the curriculum.
Students will be encouraged to develop their ability to use economics for understanding problems that are important to them and for engaging with policy debates. CORE will seek input from students, policymakers, academics, businesses, and professional economists from the private and public sector. Guiding the curriculum will be the view that economics – like other sciences – should confront its proposed explanations with systematic testing using evidence from history, experiments, and data.
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Eric Weinstein: What Math and Physics Can Do for New Economic Thinking

New Economic Thinking

 

Blogger Ref Link http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics

 

 

 

 

   

Welcome to our video series called "New Economic Thinking." The series will feature dozens of conversations with leading economists on the most important issues facing economics and the global economy today.

This episode features Institute for New Economic Thinking grantee Eric Weinstein talking about how math and physics can foster new economic thinking. Check out the interview to see what Weinstein has to say about how these two disciplines can help create a revolution in economics.  Below is an introduction from interviewer and Director of Institutional Partnerships Marshall Auerback.  

After the economic meltdown of 2008, Warren Buffett famously warned, “beware of geeks bearing formulas.” But as this interview with Eric Weinstein illustrates, not all geeks are created equal. As Weinstein points out, while many of the mathematicians and software engineers on Wall Street failed when their abstractions turned ugly in practice, there are a number of physicists and mathematicians who have applied used the empirical disciplines of their profession to help refine many problems that have bedeviled traditional mainstream economics. Weinstein’s own history of using gauge theory to deal with the complex problem of calculating consumer price inflation accurately shows how physicists have successfully brought their science to bear on some of the thorniest problems in economics.
True, the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 was largely a failure of mathematical modeling and faulty statistical assumptions. But even more, it was a failure of some very sophisticated financial institutions to think like physicists. Models – whether in science or finance – have limitations. They break down under certain conditions. And in 2008, sophisticated models fell into the hands of people who didn’t understand their purpose – and didn’t care. It was a catastrophic misuse of science.
The solution, however, is not to give up on models. It's to make them better and more elegant. In this interview, Weinstein reveals many creative ways that physics and more sophisticated forms of math can be used to rescue economics from itself and restore its now tarnished reputation.

In this video: 

Eric Weinstein