I gave the talk below to the Cambridge Society for Economic Pluralism yesterday. This student-formed society is attempting to open economics to debate–something which, despite the enormous schisms that exist within economics, is in practice sadly lacking.
Economists of one school of thought (such as the Neoclassical) don’t listen to or debate with those from others (such as the Post Keynesian or Austrian)-as you can see from Cochrane’s dismissive remarks about non-Neoclassical economics in the Playboy article on economics. Even within schools (such as the Neoclassical), different factions barely communicate with each other-as you can see by perusing some of the “Freshwater, New Classical” versus “Saltwater, Old Hicksian” (whoops, sorry, they think they’re “New Keynesians”) blog entries.