“Why and How Economics Must Change” | Jayati Ghosh

Jayati Ghosh has a new article on the IMF’s Finance & Development  blog entitled “Why and How Economics Must Change,” in which she discusses the problems with the omission of power analysis from the discipline:

Why does this happen? The original sin could be the exclusion of the concept of power from the discourse, which effectively reinforces existing power structures and imbalances. Underlying conditions are swept aside or covered up, such as the greater power of capital compared with workers; unsustainable exploitation of nature; differential treatment of workers through social labor market segmentation; the private abuse of market power and rent-seeking behavior; the use of political power to push private economic interests within and between nations; and the distributive impacts of fiscal and monetary policies. The deep and continuing concerns with GDP as a measure of progress are ignored; despite its many conceptual and methodological flaws, it remains the basic indicator, just because it’s there.