Economic textbooks ‘are still teaching theories discredited by financial crisis’

Will the next generation of Irish economists be better prepared to tackle an economic crisis or has the profession failed to learn from the largest financial crash since the great depression?

Last week a professor of economics at Imperial College, London, Michael Joffe, said that textbooks for the subject continued to teach theories that have been completely discredited by the financial crisis, and some that had been debunked decades ago.

He was not arguing from an ideological perspective but from that of a scientist. He said the aim of the subject should be to provide students with analysis based on the way the world works, not the way theories argue it ought to work.