Economists and Crises

In this report we present the results of our investigation into how well economics degrees have prepared students and graduates to understand the Covid-19 crisis, the environmental crisis and the crisis of systemic bias and social exclusion.

78.5% of the economics students and graduates we surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that this crisis should be a turning point in how Economics is taught; this consensus for change held across different levels of study and RE affiliation.

We argue that the economists of the future should receive a training that is critical, pluralist, interdisciplinary and applicable to real world problems.

This report demonstrates how economics courses are currently falling short of this vision and failing to prepare economics graduates for the effects of a multitude of crises. From this point forward, it is vital that the discipline better applies itself to the “real-world”, is honest about bias and learns from other subjects and schools of thought to better equip its graduates for a world that is so reliant upon its economists.