IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/elg/aeejrn/v3y2024i2p188-203.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Making microeconomics less ideological

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Cauvel

    (N/A)

  • Aaron Pacitti

    (N/A)

  • Jon D. Wisman

    (N/A)

Abstract

The standard introductory course in microeconomics presents a sophisticated set of tools for understanding the dynamics of markets, which are of central importance in all contemporary societies. Unfortunately, most textbooks for this course inadequately address, and frequently distort, the following six issues critical to students’ understanding of economic society: the nature of work and its relation to utility; social interdependence in decision-making; economic growth as the principal objective of modern socio-economic systems; the overall importance of market externalities; the pervasiveness of market power and its impact on consumers; and the relationship between property rights and economic justice. The outcome is that students are often left with the impression that unfettered markets necessarily deliver economic efficiency and just outcomes, resulting in a pedagogy that serves as ideology, legitimating prevailing and unequal social conditions. This article is intended to highlight these ideological aspects of the standard microeconomics curriculum and to offer professors some relatively simple strategies for addressing these issues without the need to significantly alter the curriculum.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Cauvel & Aaron Pacitti & Jon D. Wisman, 2024. "Making microeconomics less ideological," Advances in Economics Education, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 3(2), pages 188-203, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:elg:aeejrn:v:3:y:2024:i:2:p188-203
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/view/journals/aee/3/2/article-p188.xml
    Download Restriction: Restricted Access
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    microeconomic education; realism of assumptions; ideology; social role of microeconomics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
    • A14 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Sociology of Economics
    • A20 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - General
    • B40 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - General
    • D00 - Microeconomics - - General - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elg:aeejrn:v:3:y:2024:i:2:p188-203. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Phillip Thompson (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elgaronline.com/aee .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.