Is Teaching Expert Economists a Good Idea?

Tom is an applied economist, and so am I, and we are both old — by now very old — teachers of the trade. We both believe that the best way to educate students in economics is to have them think through concrete problems, such as the optimal pricing of an externality or the correct economics of US slavery. That is, we both doubt that mere High Theory is the way forward, in the science or in the teaching of it. We do not think that existence theorems — “There exists an optimal pollution tax”; “Slaves could buy out their...