Opinion
'Economist's Mill'
This relates to the views expressed by Hussain Bin Fatima (hereafter economised to HBF) in her letter published on 6 January, 1999. HBF does not like economics because it does not use mathematics to the extent other hardcore sciences do. HBF does not also like the economists of both indigenous (Debapriya Bhattacharya, who interviewed Sen on TV) and foreign varieties (Sen had three cheers because he is a "gentleman" and a "great philosopher", unfortunately not because he happens to be an economist). The economics profession has achieved, to HBF's view, its reputation or lack of it due to the success of the economists in "occupying positions of power".
I am afraid she is wrong on all counts and this has to be sorted out.
Her knowledge of economics stems from introductory textbooks she has allegedly seen while she was in "one of the halls of Dhaka University". She used to laugh at the level of mathematics used by her contemporaneous students who were studying economics. I do not understand why she had to laugh! She could have been reasonably annoyed because her mathematically weak friends were trying to tax her precious time that she could have better spent on learning mathematics. Or she would have been immensely delighted to bail them out of the problem because she had termed them as "friends".
This makes me believe that she has a layperson-type hatred towards this discipline without knowing what it is all about. If she were familiar with current textbooks (such as those written by Varian) or with some journals (such as the Journal of Economic Theory) or with recent developments in econometrics, she might have possibly refrained from writing such a letter to exhibit her ignorance. But that is not my point.
A discipline is valued by its social role - i.e. how the society benefits from it - not by the level of its mathematical sophistication. Mathematics is one of the tools (amongst others) used by economists and it is used to the extent it helps the discipline to analyse the phenomena under study. In fact, economists have lately been very cautious, if not sceptic, about its over mathematisation.
For example, Ronald Coase, Douglass North and others who belong to the school of New Institutional Economics but unfortunately received Nobel prize in economics in the '90s did not use mathematics than what was required for their analysis.
HBF considers the statement that "improper" distribution of income can cause famine amidst adequate availability of food as "truism" and this has been dealt with adequately by bat-tala novels. Such "truism" is often not understood by policymakers. It is not an assertion either. It is a derived result for which not only sophisticated mathematics was used but also new concepts such as entitlement failures were developed by Sen.
These are socially valuable results with direct policy implications (consider the post-flood strategy of the current government of not only importing food but also issuing VGF cards - an instrument that can make up for entitlement failures). Unless HBF appreciates the importance of this derived result (and the way it was derived) and its policy implications she will not be in a position to understand why the interviewer of Sen "made much of the theory".
The question whether there is a justifiable provision for Nobel prize in economics is not that important (it might be more important to know how people with slide rules grab social power though). This discipline will grow with or without this prize as long as there are people to hire economists! Economics as a discipline had developed independently of the prize and will continue to do so as long it has a social value.
Did Sen study economics to get a Nobel prize? If that was the case he would have been studying physics or chemistry probably in what HBF termed as premier institutions (who hire, fire and train economists till date!) or at its worst in the university where HBF had studied or he would have been found competing with a Mother Teresa or an Anwar Sadat to grab a Nobel prize in peace!
Sen and many others in the profession started studying economics well before there was any Nobel prize in economics.
The writer is a research fellow at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies.
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