Quote:
|
Originally Posted by howardw
Hello folks,
I'm looking for a reference that gives a schools underlying econ philosophy. It seems that might would be useful before applying. For example, Chicago is obviously free-market oriented (monetarist?) and GMU is also free-market with some austrian leanings (not sure how strong that is, but it is a sub-specialty there). Is there a webpage or something that has this information?
If not, can I get views on the following:
Texas
Duke
UNC
GMU
Tenn
Clemson
UGA
Florida
FSU
WVU
Vanderbilt
Virginia
Washington (I'm generally interested in the south, but I currently live in WA, so might as well ask)
Thanks...
Howard
note: I just submitted this but it seemed to fail, I hope there aren't two posts.
|
I would say that most of present-day academic economists are free-marketers (each to a different extent) in the sense that they generally favor the free markets whenever they lead to more efficient outcomes. Having said that, economics is not about preaching the efficiency of free markets. It's about the tools of economic analysis which you should apply to evaluate the economic and public policy decisions. Even Milton Friedman, whose views can be classified as libertarian, wrote that each economic policy choice has to be carefully evaluated with respect to efficiency outcomes.
This is something that many people outside of economics can't gasp. I once had a roommate who was a fresh transfer student majoring in political science. He immedeately declared that he has socialist views and that he favors "very big government". Then he eargerly proceeded to ask me: "So what are your views towards regulation?", like the economics can give you a straight answer on whether all regulation is good and bad.
Free-market vs other school of thought is not really the question you should ask yourself. You should ask yourself what are the fields of economics that you're interested in and then see which schools have an active research group in that area. If you haven't decided yet, then you should apply to the larger departments which will offer you more possibilities than other schools.
By the way, it is true that Monetarism is associated with Milton Friedman who is also a very prominent free-marketer. However, that doesn't imply that monetarism is about free markets in general. Monetarism a view within the macroeconomic theory and policy. But I can see why you'd ask this question. A lot of introductory macroeconomics textbooks talk only about Keynesian and Monetary economics leaving one with a feeling that those are still the prevailing theories in macroeconomics today.