Paul,
Many thanks for your comments. However, I probably didn't make myself that
clear. What information about the actual workings of the Canadian/US
economy would you like your students to know before they leave school? For
example, they need to know what GATT is, and what's happening with it.
They need to know about the workings of the Social Security Act. NAFTA
and other "free-trade" associations. The EU. and so on.
As an Institutionalist/Marxist, I'm very familiar with Commons and teach
him in some of my courses. What I'm really looking for are suggestions
which could form the backbone of a economics major senior graduation exam,
as well as something that could more usefully serve in the introductory
course. I agree with you about the "neoclassical fraud" -- what would you
like to see put in its place for an introductory course in economics? I
have the feeling that economics majors leave the university without any
real knowledge of the actual conditions of industrial life.
Thanks again for your input.
Larry Shute
Thanks for your message at 10:52 PM 10/29/97 -0600,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Your message was:
>Larry Shute asked for a list of the most important
>institutions in the market to try to educate his
>colleagues about the important constraints on the
>neoclassical fraud (er. sorry "model") of the economy.
>Unfortunately, I don't think this is a viable approach
>to the problem. Commons defined an institution as
>"collective action in control of individual action."
>That means that "an institution" is anything that
>constrains market behaviour -- from collective agreements
>and labour union behaviour to oligopoly pricing behaviour,
>to church teaching on the moral depravity of working on
>Sundays. That is, there are no 10 (20, 30, 100) most
>important institutional constraints/
> Institutionalism is a paradigm -- that is
>institutions form a web of behaviour that (like the
>neoclassical paradigm) produce a resulting behaviour that
>one can expect and pattern a policy on. But it is not
> 10 (20, 30, 40 ) institutions that one can model in the
>neoclassical sense.
> One should look at Veblen's classics on this:
>The Theory of Business Enterprise,
>Absentee Ownership,
>The Engineers and the Price System.
>
>These are particularly enjoyable reading in the current
>context of the 'meltdown' of the stock market. I am
>sure that Thorstein is chuckling in his grave.
>
>Paul
>Paul Phillips,
>Economics,
>University of Manitoba.
>
