PRAGOTI

Students at the prestigious Harvard University walked out of a class that they felt was biased towards the neoliberal economic system, and did not teach them wholesome economics. Then, they proceeded to join the Occupy Movement, expressing their support for a "movement that is changing American discourse on economic justice". Placing this event in the context of the ongoing four-month old global 'Occupy Movement', which started on the iconic Wall Street on September 17, Dr. Sudipta Bhattacharya asks, "Is the edifice of neo-liberalism finally crumbling?"

Yesterday, the Times of India published a story on its front page titled Food Security Act may Raise Prices Globally. This story argues that with the enactment of the Food Security Act, in the event of a drought, India will have to import food from the global market, which will lead to an increase in global food prices. This line of argument is absolutely wrong and only shows the total lack of basic economics knowledge that these reporters have.

“In more than 30 years of teaching introductory macroeconomics, says Alan Blinder of Princeton University, he has never seen interest as high as it was last year... the crisis has also highlighted flaws in the existing macroeconomics curriculum... Courses in many leading universities are already being amended... Discussion of the “liquidity trap,” in which standard easing of monetary policy may cease to have any effect, had fallen out of vogue in undergraduate courses but seems to be back with a vengeance. Asset-price bubbles are also gaining more prominence.”

• excerpts from the article titled “Revise and Resubmit”

The Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics in 2009 has been awarded to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson. Their work separately on economic governance and rationale for property right structures is a more sophisticated rationale for capitalism and by extension its reigning-ideology-now-in-crisis - neoliberalism. The works of Coase, North and Williamson are the three pillars on which the ‘sophistication’ of ‘new institutional economics’ that informed the ‘good governance’ agenda of post-Washington neoliberal consensus was built upon. So it is not surprising that the Nobel memorial prize goes to the more 'sophisticated' theorists at a time when the 'crude' version faces a severe crisis of legitimacy.