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I find it very dubious that the "Income Inequality" sits at the very first section, and "Supply-and-demand" at the eighth. I'm no established economist, but my

I find it very dubious that the "Income Inequality" sits at the very first section, and "Supply-and-demand" at the eighth. I'm no established economist, but my understanding is you start at the foundational idea then move on to the its ramifications and symptoms. Why does the income inequality deserve the first seat? It definitely is one of the greatest(if not the greatest) issues of our generation, but must it precede foundations? Skimming through the "Income Inequality" section did not make it better - first exercise asks "What do you think the figure would've looked like in 14th century - I imagine it's to highlight how it's "unfair" now compared to the previous history? It talks about the 90/10 ratio and the word "richest" appears 21 times in the first page alone. "richest 10%" being 11 of them. I understand the study of economics is more about interpretation of the data and interpolation of trends based on (often seemingly ideological) school of thought, but this first look betrays a specific narrative.

dimitar 9y ago
This is not that unusual - in fact in the first edition of the famous textbook by Samuelson and Nordhaus, the Supply and Demand chapter is at page 447 of 622 [1]. For quite a long time it was thought that it was better to begin with macro issues and then discuss micro. [1]: https://books.google.bg/books?id=ITXUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PP1&redir_esc=y https://books.google.bg/books?id=ITXUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PP1&redir_e...
notahacker 9y ago
The obvious riposte is that the fact that money/resources are not equally distributed is foundational to the economic concept of demand (viz. "the amount of money/resources an entire market is willing to exchange for something, constrained by potential market participants' initial money/resource allocations"), particularly as the notion of economic demand is frequently elided with "what the public wants in proportion to how much they want it" to push an alternative specific narrative. (I'm less impressed with the rest of what I'm skimming through of the early chapters than I thought I might be, but not even the most value-free and purely technical approach to teaching how an economy is believed to work is free from narrative implications)
gregimba 9y ago
I noticed this too, a bit bizarre and out of place
- milesvp 9y ago
  Yes truly. Especially since most classically trained economists don't tend to believe that income inequality actually matters, and those that do, tend to argue it only matters because people think it matters. My bigger concern about the first chapter is that income inequality is actually a very advanced topic. That requires a lot of technical analysis. At the very least you have to discuss the concept of power laws which income distributions fit quite well, and is exactly what I would expect without direct government intervention. Making it the first section of the first chapter, really trivializes the topic.
  - culturalzero 9y ago
    Yeah, I guess the Head of the Department of Economics at Oxford must have missed out on that classical training somehow.
    - ue_ 9y ago
      Quite a few classically trained economists then go on to become neo-Ricardians or Marxists, as the content of classical political economy is often ignored or dismissed out of hand - but the idea of the classically trained economist as someone who ironically dosen't have much training in classical economics seems too real to me.
      - ionised 9y ago
        No true Scotsman fallacy at work here.
  - jimmytidey 9y ago
    1) There's no economic consensus that inequality doesn't matter. 2) I'm sure plenty of people who do not understand power laws are able to comprehend economic concepts around inequality.
michaelt 9y ago
I guess the parts you skimmed didn't include the introduction, eh? It says: We want to change the way economics is taught [...] Students in economics all over the world were asking, just as I had asked a few years previously: ‘Why has the subject of economics become detached from our experience of real life?’ [...] we have tried an experiment in classrooms around the world. We ask students: ‘What is the most pressing problem that economists should address?’ ...and the that experiment said inequality. At least according to students at three universities and professional economists at two central banks. If you want to write a book that starts with motivations before delving into the nuts and bolts, and you ask customers what they think is most important and they all say the same thing, it seems reasonable enough to put that first.
- nolemurs 9y ago
  > If you want to write a book that starts with motivations before delving into the nuts and bolts, and you ask customers what they think is most important and they all say the same thing, it seems reasonable enough to put that first. Starting with motivations is great. An introduction where an expert explains why economists think economics is important would be interesting and compelling. Telling us about a topic that students think are what makes economics is important is silly. If the students are right that the topic is most important, then it will come out in the expert introduction. If they're wrong, then wouldn't the version that actually gets at what makes economics compelling and interesting be better?
  - kbutler 9y ago
    I'm not sure. Experts often tend to be focused on the details, the minutiae, and the leading edge of research. A cooking expert (5-star chef) is not likely the right person to teach an introduction to cooking class (cooking basic foods using everyday techniques). That said, novices often don't know how a subject impacts their lives. I was skeptical of income inequality's prominence, but by the "how does it impact me", it may not be a bad start.
  - stupidcar 9y ago
    Except they didn't ask the students what they thought "makes economics important". Since the intended audience is undergraduate economics students, they probably don't need or want to be patronised with an explanation of why a professor thinks they should study the subject they've already chosen to study. That would be silly. What they did ask is, "what is the most pressing problem that economists should address?" If the intention, as stated, is to write a textbook that helps reduce the gap between economics as a theoretical discipline and economics as experienced in the real-world, then it absolutely makes sense to begin with what students consider to be the most pressing real-world economic issue, and use that as a springboard to explore the rest of the discipline. In fact, starting with real world examples and applications, and gradually building towards fundamental, mathematical theories and models is the right way to teach any scientific subject. It mirrors the actual development of science, where fundamental theories are derived based on observation of the real world, and can be later disproved by new evidence. Introducing abstract and theoretical models too early not only risks confusing students, but it risks creating a situation where the models are considered intrinsically "real", and contradictory evidence is ignored. This issue has plagued economics, have taken abstract and simplified theories about markets and human behaviour and made them ideological dogma. The theories end up becoming lenses through which all evidence about the world is viewed, rather than imperfect attempts to explain the evidence.
module0000 9y ago
Possibly the bias of the author explains why such a hot-in-the-news item appears at the top of this document. Just a guess though, there could be a sane reason that eludes us.
- culturalzero 9y ago
  There is, he didn't read the introduction to the book lol
dragonwriter 9y ago
> I find it very dubious that the "Income Inequality" sits at the very first section, and "Supply-and-demand" at the eighth. I'm no established economist, but my understanding is you start at the foundational idea then move on to the its ramifications and symptoms. Descriptive facts (like inequality) are more fundamental than the predictive theoretical models derived from facts (like supply and demand). OTOH, it's true that social sciences often reverse these, both in pedagogy and in priority (and economics may be the worst of the social sciences in this regard.)
jayflux 9y ago
>I find it very dubious that the "Income Inequality" sits at the very first section, and "Supply-and-demand" at the eighth. I'm no established economist, but my understanding is you start at the foundational idea then move on to the its ramifications and symptoms. They literally answer this in the preface, its worth giving that a read first before moving on through the book. "We ask students: ‘What is the most pressing problem that economists should address?’ The word cloud below shows the response that students at Humboldt University gave to us on the first day of their first class in economics." They want to change the way economics is taught, and the students they surveyed felt inequality was a more pressing problem than anything else.
- Shivetya 9y ago
  but that is an easy score given the amount this is brought up over and over as a reason for issues in society when the real issue is how politicians use the system to put people at odds with each other.
brudgers 9y ago
One of the most influential economic theories over the past two centuries was based on observed inequalities in wealth distribution during the 19th century. Typically, economics exposition starts from either that thesis or its free market antithesis.
ue_ 9y ago
>I find it very dubious that the "Income Inequality" sits at the very first section Deciding on what to start a bigger work is always a problem with things like this, so I wouldn't be too harsh on it. I believe I read that Marx spent 3 years deciding where exactly to start Capital Vol. I; in fact, he'd completed drafts for Vol. III by that time. After much consideration he started with the analysis of the commodity, not labour, not money, not alienation, not surplus value. He commented in a foreword to the French edition that the French had a habit of wanting to get to the heart of the matter quickly - and for this he apologised. I think your view is that of Marx's Frenchman.
sudomake 9y ago
Theres a more in depth chapter on income inequality later on the page.
Iv 9y ago
Actually, that's something fundamental, and maybe more thought-trough than appears at first, that they are doing here. > but my understanding is you start at the foundational idea then move on to the its ramifications and symptoms. That's certainly how you do in electronics and physics. Explain transistors and logic gates before studying a CPU. We know exactly how transistor behave in some specific conditions. We know they will continue to believe that way when surrounded by millions of others, we know its failures mode, etc... In economics, you can present the things that way, many textbooks do, but the problem is that it is a lie. You can start with micro-economics, game theory, opportunity costs, marginal costs, supply and demand. The problem is, we do not know how to get from there to macro-economics. It is deeply unsatisfying and an active field of research but it should not be presented to students as a solved problem. The thing is, if your interest lies in inequalities, you are in the field of macro-economics, you want to take a more observational science approach like, say, astronomy. In astronomy you are looking at stars. Well, you think they are stars, they surely look like stars. You don't know exactly what is inside or how they work, but you start by classifying them into observational categories. You start to have rough models of how they may form. Your models assume a homogeneous non-rotating, perfectly spheric mass, you know these assumptions are wrong so you expect deviations and errors as you refine your model. That's how macro-economists do: they observe correlations, try to model how they can be linked causally, propose theories, observe if these theories are vindicated (because it is hard to make a controlled experiment in macroeconomics). So if you are interested in inequalities, start by observing it! Understand the shape it has, how it evolves, and start studying things that seem correlated to it, that it may cause or be caused by. But that book breaks the lie that we know how to go from micro- top macro- economics. I think it is a very important step. Bring back a bit of humility and clarity to the field.

dimitar 9y ago

This is not that unusual - in fact in the first edition of the famous textbook by Samuelson and Nordhaus, the Supply and Demand chapter is at page 447 of 622 [1]. For quite a long time it was thought that it was better to begin with macro issues and then discuss micro. [1]: https://books.google.bg/books?id=ITXUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PP1&redir_esc=y https://books.google.bg/books?id=ITXUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PP1&redir_e...

notahacker 9y ago

The obvious riposte is that the fact that money/resources are not equally distributed is foundational to the economic concept of demand (viz. "the amount of money/resources an entire market is willing to exchange for something, constrained by potential market participants' initial money/resource allocations"), particularly as the notion of economic demand is frequently elided with "what the public wants in proportion to how much they want it" to push an alternative specific narrative. (I'm less impressed with the rest of what I'm skimming through of the early chapters than I thought I might be, but not even the most value-free and purely technical approach to teaching how an economy is believed to work is free from narrative implications)

gregimba 9y ago

I noticed this too, a bit bizarre and out of place

milesvp 9y ago
Yes truly. Especially since most classically trained economists don't tend to believe that income inequality actually matters, and those that do, tend to argue it only matters because people think it matters. My bigger concern about the first chapter is that income inequality is actually a very advanced topic. That requires a lot of technical analysis. At the very least you have to discuss the concept of power laws which income distributions fit quite well, and is exactly what I would expect without direct government intervention. Making it the first section of the first chapter, really trivializes the topic.
- culturalzero 9y ago
  Yeah, I guess the Head of the Department of Economics at Oxford must have missed out on that classical training somehow.
  - ue_ 9y ago
    Quite a few classically trained economists then go on to become neo-Ricardians or Marxists, as the content of classical political economy is often ignored or dismissed out of hand - but the idea of the classically trained economist as someone who ironically dosen't have much training in classical economics seems too real to me.
    - ionised 9y ago
      No true Scotsman fallacy at work here.
- jimmytidey 9y ago
  1) There's no economic consensus that inequality doesn't matter. 2) I'm sure plenty of people who do not understand power laws are able to comprehend economic concepts around inequality.

michaelt 9y ago

I guess the parts you skimmed didn't include the introduction, eh? It says: We want to change the way economics is taught [...] Students in economics all over the world were asking, just as I had asked a few years previously: ‘Why has the subject of economics become detached from our experience of real life?’ [...] we have tried an experiment in classrooms around the world. We ask students: ‘What is the most pressing problem that economists should address?’ ...and the that experiment said inequality. At least according to students at three universities and professional economists at two central banks. If you want to write a book that starts with motivations before delving into the nuts and bolts, and you ask customers what they think is most important and they all say the same thing, it seems reasonable enough to put that first.

nolemurs 9y ago
> If you want to write a book that starts with motivations before delving into the nuts and bolts, and you ask customers what they think is most important and they all say the same thing, it seems reasonable enough to put that first. Starting with motivations is great. An introduction where an expert explains why economists think economics is important would be interesting and compelling. Telling us about a topic that students think are what makes economics is important is silly. If the students are right that the topic is most important, then it will come out in the expert introduction. If they're wrong, then wouldn't the version that actually gets at what makes economics compelling and interesting be better?
- kbutler 9y ago
  I'm not sure. Experts often tend to be focused on the details, the minutiae, and the leading edge of research. A cooking expert (5-star chef) is not likely the right person to teach an introduction to cooking class (cooking basic foods using everyday techniques). That said, novices often don't know how a subject impacts their lives. I was skeptical of income inequality's prominence, but by the "how does it impact me", it may not be a bad start.
- stupidcar 9y ago
  Except they didn't ask the students what they thought "makes economics important". Since the intended audience is undergraduate economics students, they probably don't need or want to be patronised with an explanation of why a professor thinks they should study the subject they've already chosen to study. That would be silly. What they did ask is, "what is the most pressing problem that economists should address?" If the intention, as stated, is to write a textbook that helps reduce the gap between economics as a theoretical discipline and economics as experienced in the real-world, then it absolutely makes sense to begin with what students consider to be the most pressing real-world economic issue, and use that as a springboard to explore the rest of the discipline. In fact, starting with real world examples and applications, and gradually building towards fundamental, mathematical theories and models is the right way to teach any scientific subject. It mirrors the actual development of science, where fundamental theories are derived based on observation of the real world, and can be later disproved by new evidence. Introducing abstract and theoretical models too early not only risks confusing students, but it risks creating a situation where the models are considered intrinsically "real", and contradictory evidence is ignored. This issue has plagued economics, have taken abstract and simplified theories about markets and human behaviour and made them ideological dogma. The theories end up becoming lenses through which all evidence about the world is viewed, rather than imperfect attempts to explain the evidence.

module0000 9y ago

Possibly the bias of the author explains why such a hot-in-the-news item appears at the top of this document. Just a guess though, there could be a sane reason that eludes us.

culturalzero 9y ago
There is, he didn't read the introduction to the book lol

dragonwriter 9y ago

> I find it very dubious that the "Income Inequality" sits at the very first section, and "Supply-and-demand" at the eighth. I'm no established economist, but my understanding is you start at the foundational idea then move on to the its ramifications and symptoms. Descriptive facts (like inequality) are more fundamental than the predictive theoretical models derived from facts (like supply and demand). OTOH, it's true that social sciences often reverse these, both in pedagogy and in priority (and economics may be the worst of the social sciences in this regard.)

jayflux 9y ago

>I find it very dubious that the "Income Inequality" sits at the very first section, and "Supply-and-demand" at the eighth. I'm no established economist, but my understanding is you start at the foundational idea then move on to the its ramifications and symptoms. They literally answer this in the preface, its worth giving that a read first before moving on through the book. "We ask students: ‘What is the most pressing problem that economists should address?’ The word cloud below shows the response that students at Humboldt University gave to us on the first day of their first class in economics." They want to change the way economics is taught, and the students they surveyed felt inequality was a more pressing problem than anything else.

Shivetya 9y ago
but that is an easy score given the amount this is brought up over and over as a reason for issues in society when the real issue is how politicians use the system to put people at odds with each other.

brudgers 9y ago

One of the most influential economic theories over the past two centuries was based on observed inequalities in wealth distribution during the 19th century. Typically, economics exposition starts from either that thesis or its free market antithesis.

ue_ 9y ago

>I find it very dubious that the "Income Inequality" sits at the very first section Deciding on what to start a bigger work is always a problem with things like this, so I wouldn't be too harsh on it. I believe I read that Marx spent 3 years deciding where exactly to start Capital Vol. I; in fact, he'd completed drafts for Vol. III by that time. After much consideration he started with the analysis of the commodity, not labour, not money, not alienation, not surplus value. He commented in a foreword to the French edition that the French had a habit of wanting to get to the heart of the matter quickly - and for this he apologised. I think your view is that of Marx's Frenchman.

sudomake 9y ago

Theres a more in depth chapter on income inequality later on the page.

Iv 9y ago

Actually, that's something fundamental, and maybe more thought-trough than appears at first, that they are doing here. > but my understanding is you start at the foundational idea then move on to the its ramifications and symptoms. That's certainly how you do in electronics and physics. Explain transistors and logic gates before studying a CPU. We know exactly how transistor behave in some specific conditions. We know they will continue to believe that way when surrounded by millions of others, we know its failures mode, etc... In economics, you can present the things that way, many textbooks do, but the problem is that it is a lie. You can start with micro-economics, game theory, opportunity costs, marginal costs, supply and demand. The problem is, we do not know how to get from there to macro-economics. It is deeply unsatisfying and an active field of research but it should not be presented to students as a solved problem. The thing is, if your interest lies in inequalities, you are in the field of macro-economics, you want to take a more observational science approach like, say, astronomy. In astronomy you are looking at stars. Well, you think they are stars, they surely look like stars. You don't know exactly what is inside or how they work, but you start by classifying them into observational categories. You start to have rough models of how they may form. Your models assume a homogeneous non-rotating, perfectly spheric mass, you know these assumptions are wrong so you expect deviations and errors as you refine your model. That's how macro-economists do: they observe correlations, try to model how they can be linked causally, propose theories, observe if these theories are vindicated (because it is hard to make a controlled experiment in macroeconomics). So if you are interested in inequalities, start by observing it! Understand the shape it has, how it evolves, and start studying things that seem correlated to it, that it may cause or be caused by. But that book breaks the lie that we know how to go from micro- top macro- economics. I think it is a very important step. Bring back a bit of humility and clarity to the field.