After my travel abroad, I have to get back on track in academic life. I have to catch up with the course I am handling, especially Microeconomics.
Discussing with the students the idea of “thinking like an economist” is, in principle, a good one. Mankiw, the author of the reference book, opens their eyes and helps them to think of the world, in terms of scarcity, trade-offs, opportunity cost, and efficiency. Simplifying things, and even economic visualization, of complex issues, helps them to understand the role of the economist in society.
These are the things that economists think about. And it’s generally cool and useful to think like an applied mathematician in general – to be able to construct and test models in solving problems, issues, and about the way the world works. So there are many ways that it can be useful, fun, and mind-boggling to learn to think like an economist.
Having been a member of the American Economic Association, the review of this prestigious organization of the economist around the world on “Thinking like an economist” is of great importance. The Committee published the following statement of purpose for the undergraduate economics major:
Enabling students to ‘think like an economist’ is the overarching goal of the major. All other virtues follow. Thinking like an economist involves using chains of deductive reasoning in conjunction with simplified models (such as supply and demand, benefit-cost analysis, and comparative advantage) to illuminate economic phenomena. To some, economists tend to abstract too much from the richness of human behavior and reality; to many economists, the strength of our analysis is the provision of focus and clarity of thought; parsimonious models are a virtue, not a vice.
Thinking like an economist also involves identifying and evaluating tradeoffs in the context of constraints, distinguishing positive from normative analysis, and tracing behavioral implications of change while abstracting from aspects of reality. It, moreover, involves describing redistributive implications of change, amassing data to evaluate economic events, and testing hypotheses about how consumers and producers make choices and how the economy works. Finally, thinking like an economist involves examining many problems through a filter of efficiency and equity — coping with limited resources.
The 1991 statement by the American Economic Association’s Committee on Economic Education seemed to equate economic thinking with critical thinking. Being an economist requires creative skills, too. Identifying economic issues and problems, framing them in models and ways other people do not see, devising novel policy proposals for dealing with problems, analyzing both the intended and unintended effects of policies, and devising innovative methods to estimate the magnitude of these effects — all are as central to the discipline as is the development of logically coherent theories. (From John J. Siegfried, et al.
The economists have shown in their review that “Thinking like an economist” have both critical thinking and problem-solving aspect.
In the classroom, the students learn how to be critical in allocating resources amidst scarcity and the effect of raising the production of one good over the other. Most importantly, the logic of economic growth, in solving efficiency and equity.
Real LexEcon 