How can these skills be acquired? Not by studying the modern academic subject called "Economics". In most cases that is almost like undergoing a self-administered lobotomy. Students of economics today are force-fed theoretical models of startling banality and irrelevance, leavened only by doses of econometric techniques of dubious validity and near-zero intellectual interest. Typically, they complete their course knowing nothing about the British economy and untrained in how to think.
The subject they should have studied is economic history. Yet this is in sharp decline in British universities. And knowledge of political and social history would be pretty useful too. Knowledge of the history of economic thought would be the icing on the cake. Take a mind trained that way, allied to numerical skill and capable of abstract reasoning and you have the perfect economist.
Of course, the mumbo-jumbo men defend themselves against critics like me by saying that the trouble with us is that "we cannot do the math". In most cases this is true. But I don't think it hits the spot. Many of the great economists, like Keynes, were mathematicians who laid the mathematics aside.
The mathematical complexity of modern economics would not matter if what emerged was something of great value. But it isn't. From bizarre assumptions to banal conclusions, what emerges is often useless. In the whole history of modern man, there can never have been a field of study with a higher ratio of innate difficulty to intrinsic worth.
This situation is dangerous. Those who profess to know about this subject in practice often know nothing. And they are so obsessed with the mathematical complexity of what they produce that they pay insufficient attention to the ideology that creeps, insidiously, into what they say and write. The subject has become all technique and no thought.
If things carry on this way I think it will die. The parts that are of real value might be taken up by other disciplines ? business studies and geography. Perhaps that would be the best thing. But as someone trained in the subject some 40 years ago and still fascinated by it, I think that would be a shame.
There are three ways that things can change. First from within. Academic economists who are not followers of the established religion must have the courage of their convictions and speak out. Criticise the unnecessary complexity and other-worldliness. Say the emperor has no clothes.
Second, the consumers of the stuff, namely the students can and should voice their criticisms and vote with their feet. Third, and perhaps most important, the way that central funding and research grants are allocated needs to change. Economics is far too important to be left to academic economists.
? Roger Bootle is managing director of Capital Economics and economic adviser to Deloitte.
roger.bootle@capitaleconomics.com
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