Free entrance. Registration required. Seminar languages will be Portuguese and English. Translation will be provided.
 

Economic issues are very often the most crucial ones in the political agenda. And economists are particularly well positioned to speak on these topics in a qualified manner and to give advice. Through their advice and, in particular, by inducing institutional change economists put in practice what are their views and propositions about the “real world” and about how it must conform to an idealized picture of the functioning of the economy.

Economic knowledge is thus also a domain of expertise. The concept of performativity has been used to highlight the complex relations standing between the sciences and their object and the capacity of the former to change the latter. Economics, through public policies and the institutional reconfigurations induced by those policies, permanently performs a transformation of the economy. It may even be claimed that economics is intentionally performative. It wants to shape and reshape markets, others institutions and, arguably, even agents. Given this intention and effective capacity to succeed, an economic theorist may always attribute any observed “anomaly” to “imperfections” in reality rather than to failures in theory.

In stressing the “constructive” nature of the relation between “economic science” and its subject matter the performativity approach, arguably, sheds little light on instances in which, to use Myrdal’s expression, “facts kick”, discrediting theories. Nevertheless, habits of thought (beliefs) embedded in scientific theories are permanently confronted with consequences of action. Surprising consequences of courses of action that were grounded on previous beliefs, necessarily shatter the beliefs, potentially leading to their reconfiguration. The pragmatist-institutionalist tradition stresses the element of “surprise” as a driver of research. Surprising “real world events”, consequences of policies at odds with proclaimed goals, may indeed trigger a reflection on ends worth pursuing, and revisions of previous beliefs on matters of fact, with an impact in knowledge and policy.

The Portuguese memorandum - its theoretical foundations, values and proposed public policies, and, on the other hand, its consequences - has been our context of inquiry. We have intended to shed light on how the economy is permanently (re)configured by economic policies, more, in particular, on how evidence about the (un)success of the Portuguese memorandum is disputed in the public space, and on how economic ideas and theories interact with the object they studied. If, on the one hand, it may be argued, in line with Mitchell, that “the evidence never seems complete enough to establish conclusive arguments”, on the other hand, the impact of events during and after the 2008-09 crisis has recently lead the IMF (2013) to reassess certain stabilised and conventional views, shared by economists and policymakers, on fiscal policy and its effectiveness as a countercyclical tool, on the proper design of fiscal adjustment programs, and on fiscal sustainability and the role of fiscal institutions.

A special concern has been the relationship between two domains of creation of economic knowledge - the academia and the public sphere engaging scientists, experts from international organisations, such as the IMF, the EC or the ECB, journalists and laymen. Economists have very often interests in both domains: they have a role in the academia and, in addition, act as advisers of international organisations and sometimes even engage in the political realm.

What is the relationship between the economist qua scientist and the economist acting as an expert? What role is played by the scientific community and experts in the justification and implementation of the policies prescribed in the Memorandum? What role do journalists play in the public support of those policies? What are the main strategies of justification deployed by international organisations such as the IMF faced by the surprising consequences of certain events/policies? And how do economists change (or do not) their minds in response to real world events? Furthermore, given the relevance of economics in shaping public policies, and the impact of economic policies in peoples’ lives and wellbeing, developments within the discipline are of public interest. In what sense, given the institutional configurations of the two domains of creation of economic knowledge mentioned above, can we talk about objectivity?

These are the questions we propose to address in our seminar.
 

Organized in the context of the project OpenEc - Economics and the “Real World”: The Case of the Portuguese Memorandum | DINÂMIA’CET and CES Research Group on Science, Economy and Society