Caleb Orr
“ECONOMICS AFTER NEOLIBERALISM” describes an economics that uses public power to solve public problems. In other words, it is political economy. This does not mean that it is not “economics.” To the contrary, it means that Naidu, Rodrik, and Zucman have revealed an important truth about the discipline. By using economics as a technical tool to achieve public priorities, they demonstrate the inevitability of value decisions and create new possibilities for a politics willing to embrace it.
Economics without politics denies important realities about public life. Real-world developments driven by social and political motivations are chalked up in its models as “market failures” and “asymmetries.” It assumes the righteousness of its underlying framework of an equilibrium chosen by the preferences of market participants against other explanations that are understood to be ad hoc or irrational. Making this the basis for public policy is, to use our term for discussion, “neoliberalism”—its own kind of politics.