This debate is important because in our view the status quo is harmful in at least four respects. Firstly, it is harmful to students who are taught the "tools" of mainstream economics without learning their domain of applicability. The source and evolution of these ideas is ignored, as is the existence and status of competing theories. Secondly, it disadvantages a society that ought to be benefiting from what economists can tell us about the world. Economics is a social science with enormous potential for making a difference through its impact on policy debates. In its present form its effectiveness in this arena is limited by the uncritical application of mainstream methods. Thirdly, progress towards a deeper understanding of many important aspects of economic life is being held back. By restricting research done in economics to that based on one approach only, the development of competing research programs is seriously hampered or prevented altogether. Fourth and finally, in the current situation an economist who does not do economics in the prescribed way finds it very difficult to get recognition for her research.

In August of the same year economics students from 17 countries who had gathered in the USA in Kansas City, released their International Open Letter to all economics departments calling on them to reform economics education and research by adopting the broadband approach.Their letter includes the following seven points.

1. A broader conception of human behavior. The definition of economic man as an autonomous rational optimizer is too narrow and does not allow for the roles of other determinants such as instinct, habit formation and gender, class and other social factors in shaping the economic psychology of social agents.

2. Recognition of culture. Economic activities, like all social phenomena, are necessarily embedded in culture, which includes all kinds of social, political and moral value-systems and institutions. These profoundly shape and guide human behavior by imposing obligations, enabling and disabling particular choices, and creating social or communal identities, all of which may impact on economic behavior.

3. Consideration of history. Economic reality is dynamic rather than static – and as economists we must investigate how and why things change over time and space. Realistic economic inquiry should focus on process rather than simply on ends.

4. A new theory of knowledge. The positive-vs.-normative dichotomy which has traditionally been used in the social sciences is problematic.The fact-value distinction can be transcended by the recognition that the investigator’s values are inescapably involved in scientific inquiry and in making scientific statements, whether consciously or not. This acknowledgement enables a more sophisticated assessment of knowledge claims.

5. Empirical grounding. More effort must be made to substantiate theoretical claims with empirical evidence.The tendency to privilege theoretical tenets in the teaching of economics without reference to empirical observation cultivates doubt about the realism

of such explanations.

6. Expanded methods. Procedures such as participant observation, case studies and discourse analysis should be recognized as legitimate means of acquiring and analyzing data alongside econometrics and formal modelling.Observation of phenomena from different vantage points using various data-gathering techniques may offer new insights into phenomena and enhance our understanding of them.

7. Interdisciplinary dialogue. Economists should be aware of diverse schools of thought within economics, and should be aware of developments in other disciplines, particularly the social sciences.

In March 2003 economics students at Harvard launched their own petition, demanding from its economics department an introductory course that would have “better balance and coverage of a broader spectrum of views” and that would “not only teach students the accepted modes of thinking, but also challenge students to think critically and deeply about conventional truths.”2

Students have not been alone in mounting increasing pressure on the status quo.Thousands of economists from scores of countries have also in various forms taken up the cause for broadband economics under the banner “Post-Autistic Economics” and the slogan “sanity, humanity and science”The PAE movement is not about trying to replace neoclassical economics with another partial truth, but rather about reopening economics for free scientific inquiry, making it a pursuit where empiricism outranks a priorism and where critical thinking rules instead of ideology.

Policy Implications of Post-Autistic Economics

经济学后向改革的政策含义

The neoclassical monopoly in the classroom and its prohibition on critical thinking means that it brainwashes successive generations of students into viewing economic reality exclusively through its concepts, which more often than not misrepresent or veil the world, especially today’s world.Nearly all of these neoclassical notions have a bearing on judgements about social, cultural and economic policy.Consequently, if society were to learn to think about economic matters outside the neoclassical conceptual system, it would almost certainly choose different policies.One of Post-Autistic Economics’ (PAE) projects has been to expose some of the many conceptual lunacies of today’s mainstream, both in terms of the concepts it uses and the concepts it lacks.Drawing on recent essays by PAE economists in A Guide to What’s Wrong with Economics, especially the chapters by Michael A. Bernstein, Geoffrey Hodgson, Peter Söderbaum, Hugh Stretton, Richard Wolff, Robert Costanza, Herman E. Daly, Jean Gadrey and Edward Fullbrook,* this brief article briefly considers ten such concepts.

Neoclassical economics regards competition as a state rather than as a process.It defines perfect competition as a market with a large number of firms with identical products, costs structures, production techniques and market information.But in real life competition is a process by which firms continually seek to re-establish the conditions of their own profitability.To compete in a market requires firms to seek out and exploit differences between them in production, technology, distribution, access to information and awareness of trends in consumption.These differences are the essential dimensions in which competition takes place.Once the neoclassical conception of competition becomes imbedded in the student’s mind, appreciation of real-world competition, and hence the policies that might enhance it, becomes logically impossible.

Neoclassical economists love to talk about freedom of choice.But this is pure rhetoric, because they define rationality in a way that eliminates free choice from their conceptual space. By rationality they mean that an agent’s choices are in conformity with an ordering or scale of preferences.The “rational” agent chooses among the alternatives available that one which is highest on his ranking. Rational behaviour simply means behaviour in accordance with some ordering of alternatives in terms of relative desirability.In order for this approach to have any predictive power, it must be assumed that the preferences do not change over some period of time.So the basic condition of neoclassical rationality is that individuals must forego choice in favour of some past reckoning, thereafter acting as automata.This conceptual elimination of freedom of choice, in both its everyday and philosophical meanings, gives neoclassical theory the hypothetical determinacy that its Newtonian inspired metaphysics require.No indeterminacy; no choice.No determinacy; no neoclassical model.This is far from just an academic matter, because society needs an economics that is able to address questions regarding freedom of choice.