I am not an Expert
I haven’t written much for the last few years. I’ve been busy. Building a company, growing a young family, discovering a lot of things about myself and the world around me.
Before I left it behind, I was an Economist professionally. I studied Economics and then Finance to Master’s level and worked as a Central Bank Economist for the first five and a half years of my career. I have published Academically in Economics and related fields (Finance, Econometrics, Complex Systems). After traversing Dunning-Kruger far enough I came to realise I knew absolutely nothing - I didn’t even know what the discipline was trying to achieve.
The State of Economics Today
The word Economics is derived from the Ancient Greek οἰκονομία which is the "way (nomos) to run a household (oikos)". There was once a clear distinction between Economics and Political Economy the “way to run a state (polis)”. Over time, Economics has morphed from an inquiry into how to run a household, or a state into an inquiry into almost every aspect of human behaviour.
The definition I was taught, and the one I still think captures the essence best is that from Lionel Robbins (1932): “Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.”
Perhaps weighed down by the enormity of the inquiry, Economics has become a cold, insular and profoundly Post-Modern disciple. Overly Mathematical (guilty!) and beset by empirical observations it cannot explain, I sense the time is coming for a revolution in Economic thought and I want to make sure I have a front-row seat when it does kick off.
And so I return full-circle to where I began when I took up Economics aged 16 - a Beginner again. I invite you to join me on my inquiry into the fundamentals of Economics, as we set out to sea, who knows where we might end up? There are many possibilities.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”
Shunryu Suzuki
Saying the quiet parts out loud
To paraphrase Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Economist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions."
My plan, so far as I have one is to ask some questions; to throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in my sails. I’ll be posting here in essay form weekly, with occasional snippets and passing thoughts curated on X.
I invite you to join me on this, an intellectual adventure.