The Economics Student *

2007-12-25 1:37 p.m.

So after my entry on the Politics Student, here’s the addition to it: The student Economist or the Economics Student.

Again taken from personal experience and personal observation, the student aspiring to enter the world of economics enters much like and much different from his politics counterpart. He may or may not choose it for his A Level or IB set of subjects. Should he (again I use he as the generic form, female students are of course included) do so, he meets up with the first definition of economics, the decision of what to produce, how to produce, and whom to produce. He then enters a myriad of subjects, seeing the most basic from of supply and demand, and gradually moving to mind bogging areas such as Keynesian-Monetarist debates, taxation and foreign exchange.

Entering economics could be said to be the same as Politics. After all, both are classified “social sciences”. Therein lies the problem, how much of a science and how much of social investigation is economics? A little sidetrack here, the scientific part politics is not absent, for in investigation and research into areas such as political support and political participation. Students of Methods (of politics) should know this. For economists, they of course, cannot not dismiss mathematics from the subject. However, as far as modern economics did start, it was hardly called economics, and was hardly concerned scarcity. I could go into a length of Political Economy here, but to cut the story short, mathematics in economy is just small part of economics. This is not to say theory has been absent in economics, but that a student of economics should not dive into the workings of equations and not be able to tread out of the mess. He should look beyond rigidities of numbers and see that even the allocation of resources must be taken in the light of moral, social and political factors.

Following this, the economics student thus must be aware of the limitations of models in his subject field. Again, back to the term “social science”, economics places many assumptions when exploring its various issues. From the start, students are taught the term “ceteris paribus”, meaning “[with] all other things being equal.” That of course helps the student in his early exploration, but it of course hardly reflects reality. Going beyond ceteris paribus does create a web of factors that does not present a solution. Yet, one must acknowledge that this is how reality should be looked at. Microeconomic data can show the equilibrium points of a firm’s or industry’s supply and demand due to a change in prices, but other factors that are ignored could still play a part. Likewise, Macroeconomic data if isolated presents an inaccurate picture. The student must use models much to aid his understanding of real world movements, but not be caught up with them.

A third and still crucial point is that students of economics should hold on to a school of thought, and yet not constrain his scope to that of looking at the debate between that school and another. It is fine a well to be a Keynesian, and of course battle against the Monetarist school. Yet, one should also note the varying types of Keynesian thought and also look at the contrast between that school and say the New Classicals and such. On this point, I should say my points on being a Classical Economists. It has long be claimed that the school of classical thought came from Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and so on, the founders of modern economics. Clarification: Adam Smith was hardly an economist, he was first a moral philosopher and his famous work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations , is erroneously looked at as a text proclaiming capitalism. He was more concerned with the effects of economic activity during his time was looking at the provision of how society should hang together. David Ricardo could be claimed to have inserted mathematics into economics with his theory of comparative advantage, but his concern was still that of political economy like Smith, and dealing with the moral concerns of the masses. What has been derived as a Classical school has been countered much following the Great Depression, though it has been claimed that Classical economists ideas were taken by the monetarists. Well, Smith and Ricardo weren’t exactly proponents laissez faire economics. Simply put, I have little support for the so called classical school.

Going back to the issue, the economics student, as scientific the subject is, and as divorced the subject is from reality, faces the challenge of find which ground he should step on. That is the critical decision for the true student economist.

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