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  • Introduction
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  • Global Shifts
    • Stefanie Babst, NATO – Rethinking Our Approach to Global Security
    • Jeremy Bentham, Royal Dutch Shell Plc – Reframing the Climate Change Debate
    • Wayne Best, Visa Inc – Demographics and Demand
    • Jean-Claude Burgelman, European Commission – A “New Deal” on Green Growth
    • Jakkie Cilliers, Institute for Security Studies – Reclaiming Legitimacy in Global Governance
    • Thomas E. Cremins, NASA – A New Space Age
    • Kristel Van der Elst, The Global Foresight Group – Rethinking Ageing
    • Tina Fordham, Citigroup – Vox Populi Risk
    • Julius Gatune, African Centre for Economic Transformation – Rethinking the Informal Economy
    • Jerome Glenn, The Millennium Project – The Age of Conscious-Technology
    • Derrick Gosselin, SCK.CEN – Predictive Analytics
    • Stefan Hajkowicz, CSIRO – The Potential of the Creative Economy
    • Kathleen Hicks, CSIS – New Security Challenges Posed by Megacities
    • Claudia Juech, The Rockefeller Foundation – Economic Opportunities in the 21st Century
    • Katell Le Goulven, UNICEF – Agile Development
    • Chris Luebkeman, Arup Group Ltd – Ambient Technology in Cities
    • Marios Maratheftis, Standard Chartered Bank – Shifting Geo-Economic Power
    • Daizo Motoyoshi, LIXIL Group Corporation – Revival of Japan
    • Herbert Oberhänsli, Nestlé SA – Rethinking Freshwater
    • Seongwon Park, STEPI – The Rising Appeal of a De-Growth Future
    • Rafael Ramírez, University of Oxford – The Possible Future of the Economics Profession
    • Rogerio Rizzi de Oliveira, Hewlett-Packard Company – Improving the Quality of Life in Megacities
    • Nouriel Roubini, New York University – The Third Industrial Revolution
    • Francisco Sagasti, FORO Nacional Internacional – The Changing Nature of Livelihoods
    • Trudpert Schelb, Siemens AG – The Next Stage of Individualization
    • Peter Schwartz, Salesforce – Fundamental Technological Progress Driving Economic Growth
    • Angela Wilkinson, OECD – Progressing Well-Being through Inclusive Growth
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Global Strategic Foresight Community Home Previous Next
  • Report Home
  • Introduction
  • Executive Summaries
  • Global Shifts
    • Stefanie Babst, NATO – Rethinking Our Approach to Global Security
    • Jeremy Bentham, Royal Dutch Shell Plc – Reframing the Climate Change Debate
    • Wayne Best, Visa Inc – Demographics and Demand
    • Jean-Claude Burgelman, European Commission – A “New Deal” on Green Growth
    • Jakkie Cilliers, Institute for Security Studies – Reclaiming Legitimacy in Global Governance
    • Thomas E. Cremins, NASA – A New Space Age
    • Kristel Van der Elst, The Global Foresight Group – Rethinking Ageing
    • Tina Fordham, Citigroup – Vox Populi Risk
    • Julius Gatune, African Centre for Economic Transformation – Rethinking the Informal Economy
    • Jerome Glenn, The Millennium Project – The Age of Conscious-Technology
    • Derrick Gosselin, SCK.CEN – Predictive Analytics
    • Stefan Hajkowicz, CSIRO – The Potential of the Creative Economy
    • Kathleen Hicks, CSIS – New Security Challenges Posed by Megacities
    • Claudia Juech, The Rockefeller Foundation – Economic Opportunities in the 21st Century
    • Katell Le Goulven, UNICEF – Agile Development
    • Chris Luebkeman, Arup Group Ltd – Ambient Technology in Cities
    • Marios Maratheftis, Standard Chartered Bank – Shifting Geo-Economic Power
    • Daizo Motoyoshi, LIXIL Group Corporation – Revival of Japan
    • Herbert Oberhänsli, Nestlé SA – Rethinking Freshwater
    • Seongwon Park, STEPI – The Rising Appeal of a De-Growth Future
    • Rafael Ramírez, University of Oxford – The Possible Future of the Economics Profession
    • Rogerio Rizzi de Oliveira, Hewlett-Packard Company – Improving the Quality of Life in Megacities
    • Nouriel Roubini, New York University – The Third Industrial Revolution
    • Francisco Sagasti, FORO Nacional Internacional – The Changing Nature of Livelihoods
    • Trudpert Schelb, Siemens AG – The Next Stage of Individualization
    • Peter Schwartz, Salesforce – Fundamental Technological Progress Driving Economic Growth
    • Angela Wilkinson, OECD – Progressing Well-Being through Inclusive Growth
    • Jill Wong, Singapore Government – The Impact of Automation on Jobs and Society
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  • Economics Growth and Development


The Possible Future of the Economics Profession
Scenarios Relating to the Social Contract Between the Economics Profession and Society

Rafael Ramírez, University of Oxford

 

The economics profession has long been granted an implicit social contract, whereby benefits from economic expertise accrued for society are rewarded with enormous power over society’s everyday affairs. But since the global financial and economic crisis, limits of what economics can do have been made visible, rendering the social contract plausibly susceptible to change. Various scenarios for the future are possible: one is “the official future of economics”, where the profession remains adaptive and close to power, with no significant change to the social contract. An alternative depicts the “economics emperor” as having been discovered to wear far fewer clothes, raising interesting questions as to whether “citizen scientists”, engineers, machines or even anybody with decent schooling and access to relevant technology could take over many of the tasks that are currently economists’ exclusive domain.

 


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23-Ramirez

 

Rafael Ramirez

Fellow in Strategy and Director, Oxford Scenarios Programme, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Author

23-Ramirez

 

Rafael Ramirez

Fellow in Strategy and Director, Oxford Scenarios Programme, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Disclaimer

All opinions expressed herein are those of the authors. The World Economic Forum provides an independent and impartial platform dedicated to generating debate around the key topics that shape global, regional and industry agendas.

Disclaimer

All opinions expressed herein are those of the authors. The World Economic Forum provides an independent and impartial platform dedicated to generating debate around the key topics that shape global, regional and industry agendas.

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What are possible futures for the economics profession?

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What are possible futures for the economics profession?
It is increasingly accepted that the economics profession will need to adapt to a more complex world. As befits a field perceived to exert such immense influence, the profession has long been granted an implicit – as opposed to legal – social contract, whereby benefits accrued for society are rewarded with enormous power over society’s everyday affairs. 

But since the global financial and economic crisis, the contract between economics and society can plausibly be considered much more susceptible to change. 

The profession, and especially its “market” manifestation in finance, has put itself at the centre of power. Alternately idolized and vilified, economists populate and run key ministries, central and commercial banks, rating agencies, the financial press, insurers, private equity, and sovereign and hedge funds. They counsel the most powerful among us and are often afforded near ecclesiastical deference. The profession is expected to keep societies from “going under”, to help management be prudent, to enable us to do well and to hand over a better world to future generations. 

Economics, and the theories the field rests upon, has been resilient – so far. Although it trembled with the 1930s depression, the profession has not only survived but also thrived in the years since. It has done so despite enduring major setbacks periodically, the most recent being the ongoing crisis which began in 2008. Economics has spawned and accommodated a broad set of ideas and concepts – Keynesian, supply-side, neoclassical, behavioural economics, to name but a few – that often disagree with one another. Mathematics and its algorithms, the spreadsheet’s ubiquity, computer servers and faster communications have all bolstered the field. With these tools, financial arrangements, analyses and the policies they support appear ever more “scientific”, “rational” and “objective” – but all too often beyond the understanding of all but a few “economics experts”.

Yet the failures of the profession are numerous, growing and now potentially lethal. Systemic risk has not been priced into products. Climate change illustrates that the longstanding tactic of treating things to which it is difficult to affix a numeric value as “externalities” may ultimately prove fatal. So-called “trickle-down” economic development has not worked as expected. Growing inequalities may give rise to socially and politically unviable conditions. Many millions are excluded from “the game” economists describe and do not benefit from the efficient resource allocation promised. This year alone, 21 million15 individuals, as outsiders to “the market”, have themselves become commodities exchanged for drugs, weapons or money by traffickers; 36 million are slaves.16

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Exploring the social contract between society and the economics profession

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Exploring the social contract between society and the economics profession

Questions have arisen about the fundamental assumptions upon which economics has been premised. To wit, LSE anthropologist David Graeber found no hard evidence anywhere in history that money was invented to replace barter.17 To the contrary, he showed the monetization of what might remain unpayable obligations as having provided an alternative to violence – and how quickly the two can switch places. In the July 2009 issue of The Economist, Paul Krugman said that much of the past 30 years of macroeconomics had been “spectacularly useless at best and positively harmful at worst”.18 The Dali-esque cover depicted modern economic theory as melting down. Could it be that economics arose in a historically anomalous period, one we are now exiting? Could the conditions that favoured its pre-eminence be ending?

It is not impossible to conceive that societies might take away, or at the very least severely curtail, the license to operate they have afforded the economics profession.

One possible way for such a shift to occur might be via civil society movements, such as the “altermondialistes”, “Occupy Wall Street” or the “Indignados”, who advocate an alternative societal model to the growth-based one advocated by economists.19 A second might be through creative destruction: obligations might come to be automatically traded and accounted via apps, with software engineers and technicians replacing economists, just as the navigator in the cockpit was replaced.

Various scenarios of the relationship between society and the profession can be imagined. 

One scenario might be called “the official future of economics”, where the profession remains adaptive and close to power. Here, no significant change in the economics profession’s license to operate in society would occur.20

An alternative scenario, referred to as the “Naked Economics Emperor”, depicts economics as having been discovered to wear far fewer clothes. Here, a rewriting of the contract between society and the profession would occur, raising interesting questions. Could banks become like utilities? Deprived of their current complexity, anybody decently schooled and of reasonable intelligence could run banks. Could “citizen scientists” include economics to help the local citizenry directly engage in economic decisions?21 Could machines and engineers take over a lot of what economists do now? How might such changes occur without society suffering?

Exploring possible futures of the economics profession and potential changes to its contract with society offers opportunities to reconsider long-held assumptions and to investigate key issues confronting the field, allowing proactive steps now to address them. 

The World Economic Forum’s stated mission is to improve the state of the world. Surely, then, it is important to contemplate the potential future of economics; after all it is the “E” at the centre of the World Economic Forum’s logo.

15
15 Interpol, 3rd Interpol Global Trafficking in Human Beings Conference, 12-14 November, Lyon France, http://www.interpol.int/News-and-media/Events/2014/3rd-INTERPOL-Global-Trafficking-in-Human-Beings-Conference/3rd-INTERPOL-Global-Trafficking-in-Human-Beings-Conference (accessed December 2014).
16
16 “Millions Forced to Live as Slaves, a Human Rights Group Reports”. The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/world/millions-forced-to-live-as-slaves-a-human-rights-group-reports.html?_r=0, 17 November 2014.
17
17 Graeber, D. Debt: The First 5000 Years. London: Melville House. 2011.
18
18 As cited in Schroy, J. “Post Modern Security Analysis: Moving Beyond Graham & Dodd”. Capital Flow Watch, http://www.capital-flow-watch.net/2009/08/01/post-modern-security-analysis-part-one-introduction, 1 August 2009.
19
19 See, for example, The Oxford Scenarios: Beyond the Financial Crisis. 2010. Oxford University: Institute for Science, Innovation & Society.
20
20 This is the view research suggests professional economists hold. See, for example, “The Power of Self-Belief”. The Economist, http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21635524-new-paper-looks-how-economists-became-so-influential-power-self-belief, 6 December 2014.
21
21 Citizen Science Alliance, http://www.citizensciencealliance.org/ (accessed December 2014).
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