We welcome the endorsement by the Deseret News in its editorial ("Why the University of Utah's new economic institute is a win for the state," July 21) of the need for breadth and diversity in economics training and research. We nonetheless find it quite regrettable that the editorial mischaracterized the Department of Economics at the University of Utah in terms of a narrow philosophical bent. Citing the work of two professors who are collectively over two decades into their retirement, the editorial maintains that the department bears an associated Marxian ideological bias. The hallmark of the department is its commitment to competing perspectives and their evolution (i.e., a pluralistic perspective) and as such exposes students to a range of theoretical perspectives, including Marx.
Such commitment to broad theoretical exposure has become all too rare in the discipline. As the loss of biodiversity threatens ecological systems, this loss of intellectual diversity threatens our economic system. Nearly the entire economics profession was caught flat-footed in the wake of the economic catastrophe of the Great Recession. Devoted to ever-more elegantly quantified, but unrealistic, models of unfettered market activity, the profession progressively deviated from the path-breaking insights of John Maynard Keynes, who established the theoretical framework for understanding and navigating the economy in the wake of the Great Depression. Much of the great legacy of Marriner S. Eccles is lodged in his masterful deployment of Keynesian tools in his service at the helm of FDR's Federal Reserve Board.
The meaning of pluralism takes on new dimensions as societal challenges evolve. Concerned about the lingering effects of the financial panic of 1893, and reflecting the LDS traditions of the time, students asked for a course on the political economy of cooperation. The U.’s economics department was born, serving as the founding department for the business school in 1917. Fifty years later, as the economics department prepared a new Ph.D. program in economics, the graduate school placed it in the College of Social and Behavioral Science simply because economics is a social science.
Today, the department has configured around three profound challenges of our time: economic inequality, globalization and sustainability. Our faculty and students address these issues at the local (e.g., gender-based income gaps, health impacts of air quality), national and international level. Extension of Keynesian economics remains a critical anchor in the department's pluralistic approach to these challenges. Interdisciplinary teams are involved in research across the College of Social and Behavioral Science and other units, including the health sciences. There is a strong, cutting-edge quantitative and econometric dimension to these endeavors, with the department having a robust reputation for its advanced teaching and application of these critical analytic tools.
The department has a thriving undergraduate program, accounting for one of the largest contingents of undergraduate majors on campus, third among all.
According to exit surveys, the average initial salaries of our department’s graduates are among the highest for all majors on campus. Our alumni are in prominent positions throughout the state of Utah in banking, government and private economic firms. Those graduating from the Ph.D. program are professors in dozens of colleges and universities around the country and in public and private employment. We would frankly venture that our alumni would not recognize the narrow characterization of the department depicted in the editorial.
In this era of dwindling public resources for higher education, it is understandable that other funding sources become precious. Such sources pose new challenges, however, in preserving academic freedom and scientific integrity that form the cornerstone of the pursuit of knowledge. We in the department and college remain vigilant to scientific inquiry utilizing broad theoretical perspectives and quantitative rigor that bolsters student success, but also promotes the public purpose.
Norman J. Waitzman is a professor and chairman of the Department of Economics, University of Utah.
Cynthia Berg is a professor of psychology and dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Science.