Uneconomic Economics and the Crisis of the Model World (eBook)

Matthew Watson is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Since 2013 he is also an ESRC Professorial Fellow working on the project 'Rethinking the Market'. In his research he applies methodologies from the history of thought in order to understand how modern-day markets take their distinctive form.

Cover 1
Half-Title 2
Series 3
Title 4
Copyright 5
Dedication 6
Contents 7
Acknowledgements 9
List of Abbreviations 11
1 Setting the Scene: From a Crisis of Economics to a Crisis of the State 12
Introduction 13
Competing crisis narratives of symptom and disease 14
The rehabilitation of economic theory 19
The crisis and the economics curriculum 23
Structure of the book 28
2 The Collapse of the Model World: From Faith in Equations to Unsustainable Asset Bubbles 31
Introduction 32
The growth of increasingly complex secondary mortgage markets 36
The uneconomic economics of asset-price valuation techniques 41
Performativity and counter-performativity in financial markets 47
Conclusion 52
3 The Creation of the Model World: From Formalist Techniques to the Triumph of Uneconomic Economics 56
Introduction 57
The return of the policy ineffectiveness proposition 60
The quest for a fully specified general equilibrium framework 66
Formalist technique and the logic of market self-regulation 70
Conclusion 76
4 Looking Ahead: From Uneconomic Economics to a Different Future 79
Introduction 80
The definition of good economics 81
The significance of historicised method 86
Final words 91
References 95
Index 113