Minister Judith Collins, who came to speak to my law and economics class last year, and said she "loved meeting the lecturer" - how sweet - this week announced she's defunding economics research. Maybe the class didn't go as well as I thought. The Beehive says, "The focus of the Marsden [Research] Fund will shift to core science, with humanities & social sciences panels .. no longer supported".
Collins says the shift is to better help subjects like chemistry & physics & "focus on research that helps lift economic growth" because “the Government has been clear in its mandate to rebuild our economy". She says the new focus is on "supporting research of economic, environmental or health benefit to NZ" & proposals should show they can "boost economic growth" with "real impact on our economy". You'd think with Minister Collins saying in the video above (with Bolded link) that economics is vital for lawmakers because without it they won't know "the potential effects of their laws", she may not have defunded research in the subject.
What's going on? The politics behind the announcement is that economics has been caught in a Coalition backlash against public money being used to support research topics that are left-leaning. ACT Science Spokesperson Parmjeet Parmar, who I've known for ages, said “the Marsden Fund's terms of reference have seen funding prioritized for spirituality, activism & identity politics over high-quality public good research that benefits NZ”. National Party aligned Kiwi Blog states, "Marsden Fund dewoked: this is a great & badly needed decision. I've [David Farrar] often covered how a growing proportion of Marsden Fund was going on identity politics research, wokeism & social sciences".
This Blog doesn't want to jump on partisan bandwagons regards the decision, except to make some observations. First, since the defunding of social sciences (which economics is classed under) has now been linked at high political levels to "woke research", the Coalition is treading a perilous path in terms of undermining free speech. Is the intent to defund folks whose views one disagrees with, and may cause one to lose power? ACT's MP has made the link. Collins argument is that the decision was made due to her government's "mandate to rebuild our economy". Though this Blog has rightfully slammed economic management under Labour, and keeps referring to Grant Robertson as "NZ's Worst Ever Finance Minister", is it wise for the Coalition to argue that academic research - which should be a search for the truth - is tied to supporting a political platform of "rebuilding" the economy?
Second, Collins statement argues "core sciences" are key to the rebuild. But that line has little economic content. I run a large Maths Charity that's sought to strengthen maths education in NZ, way before it was a hot political topic. That being said, I'm not aware publicly funding "core sciences" research over other subjects has a positive impact on the economy. Its easy to argue our "core science" researchers, being such a small group, have done little to help NZ's tech progress. Since where does nearly every technology used here come from? The computers & mobiles we use? Our cars? Household gadgets? Its nearly all imported. Is that bad? When NZ was the world's 2nd richest nation, we sold nearly all our farm produce to the UK. With the huge receipt of funds, we bought technologies that had been invented overseas. Its called "international trade". Maybe the best thing for us is to continue with agriculture & tourism as our two biggest exports, but get more into high value-added brands: more cheeses, wines, honeys, high-end lodges & golf-courses for wealthy foreign tourists. None of them require much high-brow research in "core sciences". Aren't we best to leave that to MIT, Cal Tech and Silicon Valley? Musk is one of the world's richest folks. He's into science, but equal to him in wealth is Bernard Arnault of France, who owns Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey and is worth $US 240 billion. He's used France's reputation for culture & fashion to make his doe. He sells those things to Silicon Valley types & buys their tech in exchange. Why can't we do the same? Leverage our cultural & natural assets?
Fourth, economics is central to what Finance Minister Willis' Ministry of Social Investment is meant to be doing. She has put former economist and Treasury Secretary Graham Scott on its Board as Chair. The ACT Party's Department of Regulation relies entirely on economists to conduct maths & statistics based cost-benefit analyses. Pharmac relies on economists to do maths cost-utility calculations to decide which drugs to purchase. The Treasury relies on its maths model of the NZ economy to advise the government on the effects of monetary & fiscal polities. NZ's highest ranked economist, Professor Peter Phillips, back in Auckland, is Emeritus Prof. of Economics & Statistics at Yale University & Fellow of American Statistical Association. Yale Economics is running programs with its Computer Science Department on topics like big data, crypto and machine-learning, which have become fully integrated into economics & finance. New Zealand's Governmental Integrated Data Infrastructure requires economists to make sense of the data and apply it to policy. The Maths Charity that I run is helping the Centre for Mathematical Social Sciences at Auckland University.
Minister Collins should read the article, "The Macroeconomist as Scientist and Engineer" by Greg Mankiw, former Chief of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. Trying to solve the problem that gave birth to macro-economics - the Great Depression of the 1930s - in terms of designing practical systems to avoid & mitigate the effects of such down-turns, has been approached using similar methods engineers use. More recently, economists have adopted similar goals to scientists - understanding how the world works. Is Minister Collins up with the play?
Sources:
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/marsden-fund-refocused-science-purpose
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mankiw/files/macroeconomist_as_scientist.pdf
What's going on? The politics behind the announcement is that economics has been caught in a Coalition backlash against public money being used to support research topics that are left-leaning. ACT Science Spokesperson Parmjeet Parmar, who I've known for ages, said “the Marsden Fund's terms of reference have seen funding prioritized for spirituality, activism & identity politics over high-quality public good research that benefits NZ”. National Party aligned Kiwi Blog states, "Marsden Fund dewoked: this is a great & badly needed decision. I've [David Farrar] often covered how a growing proportion of Marsden Fund was going on identity politics research, wokeism & social sciences".
This Blog doesn't want to jump on partisan bandwagons regards the decision, except to make some observations. First, since the defunding of social sciences (which economics is classed under) has now been linked at high political levels to "woke research", the Coalition is treading a perilous path in terms of undermining free speech. Is the intent to defund folks whose views one disagrees with, and may cause one to lose power? ACT's MP has made the link. Collins argument is that the decision was made due to her government's "mandate to rebuild our economy". Though this Blog has rightfully slammed economic management under Labour, and keeps referring to Grant Robertson as "NZ's Worst Ever Finance Minister", is it wise for the Coalition to argue that academic research - which should be a search for the truth - is tied to supporting a political platform of "rebuilding" the economy?
Second, Collins statement argues "core sciences" are key to the rebuild. But that line has little economic content. I run a large Maths Charity that's sought to strengthen maths education in NZ, way before it was a hot political topic. That being said, I'm not aware publicly funding "core sciences" research over other subjects has a positive impact on the economy. Its easy to argue our "core science" researchers, being such a small group, have done little to help NZ's tech progress. Since where does nearly every technology used here come from? The computers & mobiles we use? Our cars? Household gadgets? Its nearly all imported. Is that bad? When NZ was the world's 2nd richest nation, we sold nearly all our farm produce to the UK. With the huge receipt of funds, we bought technologies that had been invented overseas. Its called "international trade". Maybe the best thing for us is to continue with agriculture & tourism as our two biggest exports, but get more into high value-added brands: more cheeses, wines, honeys, high-end lodges & golf-courses for wealthy foreign tourists. None of them require much high-brow research in "core sciences". Aren't we best to leave that to MIT, Cal Tech and Silicon Valley? Musk is one of the world's richest folks. He's into science, but equal to him in wealth is Bernard Arnault of France, who owns Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey and is worth $US 240 billion. He's used France's reputation for culture & fashion to make his doe. He sells those things to Silicon Valley types & buys their tech in exchange. Why can't we do the same? Leverage our cultural & natural assets?
Fourth, economics is central to what Finance Minister Willis' Ministry of Social Investment is meant to be doing. She has put former economist and Treasury Secretary Graham Scott on its Board as Chair. The ACT Party's Department of Regulation relies entirely on economists to conduct maths & statistics based cost-benefit analyses. Pharmac relies on economists to do maths cost-utility calculations to decide which drugs to purchase. The Treasury relies on its maths model of the NZ economy to advise the government on the effects of monetary & fiscal polities. NZ's highest ranked economist, Professor Peter Phillips, back in Auckland, is Emeritus Prof. of Economics & Statistics at Yale University & Fellow of American Statistical Association. Yale Economics is running programs with its Computer Science Department on topics like big data, crypto and machine-learning, which have become fully integrated into economics & finance. New Zealand's Governmental Integrated Data Infrastructure requires economists to make sense of the data and apply it to policy. The Maths Charity that I run is helping the Centre for Mathematical Social Sciences at Auckland University.
Minister Collins should read the article, "The Macroeconomist as Scientist and Engineer" by Greg Mankiw, former Chief of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. Trying to solve the problem that gave birth to macro-economics - the Great Depression of the 1930s - in terms of designing practical systems to avoid & mitigate the effects of such down-turns, has been approached using similar methods engineers use. More recently, economists have adopted similar goals to scientists - understanding how the world works. Is Minister Collins up with the play?
Sources:
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/marsden-fund-refocused-science-purpose
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mankiw/files/macroeconomist_as_scientist.pdf
Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
I can't see how Collins' decision affects economics, as that isn't given much funding anyway. It doesn't seem it fit the Royal Society's woke agenda.
Of the 113 grants made this year, none went to economists or people in university economics departments. Only three had anything to do with economics and two of those only related to Maori.
A relatively small grant was given to "Statistical methods for mitigating uncertainty in complex networks of infrastructure assets". That is mathematics (applied for by Dr Xiao from Otago's maths dept) so it still should be funded in future. Then a much larger grant was given to "Combining te ao Māori concepts with contemporary economic methods to build a model of the Aotearoa New Zealand economy that analyses and quantifies intergenerational wellbeing". Who cares? This is the economic equivalent to playing whale recording to kauri trees. There was also "Mā te tāke tika, e mau roa te iwi: with a just tax system, the people are sustained. Researching a Te Tiriti-affirming tax system design". I will be surprised if the "just tax system" will tax iwi.
What idiot classified economics as a social science?
Well you must see the bind the Minister was in - she didn't think it politic perhaps to use a term like 'absolute lunacy.'
Boo hoo. I’m all for the Marsden Fund being reclaimed for real science. Economics is a worthy field of knowledge, capable of its own research, but it’s not science. Talking generally, anything called social “science” doesn’t belong in the Marsden Fund.
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