Todos somos Greg Mankiw .. o no?

Excelente análisis y excelentes recomendaciones de Robin Wells (esposa y coautora de Paul Krugman) sobre el tema de la enseñanza de los cursos introductorios de economía, en relación a la actitud de los estudiantes de Harvard frente a lo que enseña Greg Mankiw en su famoso curso de Ec10.:

"Provide Context. Compared to past years, instructors need to acknowledge the limits of free markets earlier in their courses. Students should understand the difference between the conceptual importance of free markets and their real world limitations. Explain that much of the current economic distress arises from markets that don’t behave competitively -- the labor and financial markets.

Build Trust. Trust is built when the instructor compensates for the one-sided nature of the relationship by treating students’ viewpoints with respect. And this is where the art of the perceptive instructor is most likely to be needed. ... Yet, also make clear that valuable class time won’t be wasted on debating viewpoints that are contradicted by the data.

Address Distributional Issues. The dramatic rise in U.S. income inequality compels us as instructors to address it. We shouldn’t extol the benefits of markets while ignoring today’s highly skewed distribution of the benefits. While there is no single definitive explanation, there are many factors that are feasible topics in class: moral hazard and the setting of CEO compensation, the decline of countervailing forces such as unions and higher marginal tax rates at the top end, deregulation, asset bubbles and the financialization of the U.S. economy. And then discuss: to what extent is the level of income inequality a legitimate policy target?

Finally, Adopt Some Humility. It’s true that those of us who weren’t in the business of teaching Gaussian pricing formulas for CDO’s or touting the benefits of homeownership via sub-prime mortgages aren’t directly responsible for the economic mess we’re in. But in the eyes of many students we are culpable to the extent that we dismiss the need for some re-think of the deference accorded to free markets in how we teach economics as applied to the real world. Again, I want to emphasize that we make the distinction between communicating the importance of free markets as an intellectual building block and the frequent mis-use of free market concepts when it comes to making real world policy choices.