An Inevitable Turnover

THE RECENT DECISION of the Economics Department not to promote several of its younger members is nothing unusual but part of an inevitable turnover which occurs each year. By combining reduced teaching duties with outside-financed research time, the department has been able to carry a larger number of assistant professors. With 16 such appointments and an average stay of four years, about four people begin and four end their terms each year. With, say, five non-tenured associate professors whose terms are three years, at most two appointments to that rank open each year. Allowing for an occasional appointment from the outside, one or two out of four assistant professors can thus be promoted. It follows that the size of the junior staff renders the annual loss of people inevitable. While those involved are aware of the odds, the department nevertheless has been able to attract outstanding young people. Their presence adds immeasurably to the quality of the department and to its teaching, just as (we hope) the stay at Harvard adds to their professional development and options.

Much the same holds with regard to non-tenured associate professors. Given, say, five such positions and a three-year term, one or two people will approach the end of their term each year. With tenured positions becoming available every four or five years and allowing for some of these to be filled from the outside, it again follows that promotion to tenure can be forthcoming in a minority of cases only.

This simple piece of departmental arithmetic should make it evident that failure to retain any particular person constitutes neither an act of "firing" (as some observers would have it) nor does it reflect on the excellence of those who leave. To interpret otherwise is to do injustice to them as well as to the departmeet. Why then all the concern with the department's recent decisions? The answer of course is that those not retained included two people of "radical" persuasion and the handle which this lends to the charge that they would have been retained had their political views been otherwise. I do not believe this political charge to be justified. The department acted on the basis of the same critieria which are applied in other cases. The question is rather whether being a "radical" should make a prima facie case for retention. I do not think so. In setting forth my views on the role which "radical economics" should play in the department, I make no pretence of speaking for the

As I have argued over the past two years, I believe the confrontation between "neo-classical" and "radical" with its right-left overtones to be an unproductive approach to what we should be talking about, i.e. a narrower versus a broader approach to economics. Traditional economic analysis deals with the efficient use of scarce resources in the production of material goods. The tools of this analysis are powerful even though they have been developed as part of a formal system which involves severely restricted assumptions regarding both human behavior and aspirations. Yet they are useful and must be understood (independent of the particular economic system which applies) to deal effectively with what remains the major preoccupation of the larger part of mankind (though not of the Harvard community)--namely, to secure an adequate material existence. At the same time, I join with the critics in urging that a larger view of economics be taken involving a broadened concept of economic welfare and an understanding of the social and political forces by which economic institutions and processes are shaped.

Pareto optimality clearing is not the universe, but the answer to the broader issues will not be found by limiting the search to the "radical" or neo-Marxist track. The Marxist tradition, to be sure, has contributed much to thinking in this field and interested students (like young people at other times) are attracted by its non-conformist and more Utopian aspects. Yet there are other models (e.g. Weber) by which to approach these issues and it would be ironic to launch the search for a broader and more complex view of economics by matching the overly narrow neo-classical paradigm (to use the language of this debate) with another which in its own way is as narrow and indeed less tolerant of alternative perspectives.

There is nothing wrong with many of the question which the radical economists are asking; I have tended to ask them myself for some decades. Why are some people or countries poor while others are rich? How does education effect economic mobility? What advantages or disadvantages do developing countries derive from foreign investment? How can progressive taxation be made effective? How would material welfare, human dignity and (don't forget) liberty be affected by this or that change in our economic and social institutions? What can be learned from other countries operating under different systems?

The questions are good ones and I trust that many of them are dealt with in the courses offered by this department. It is also evident that they cannot be answered by the traditional type of economic analysis alone. But the answers do not all point in one direction; nor has "radical economics" provided us with a wholly different set of tools by which to find them, tools which cannot be linked with traditional analysis and which (as radical economists would have us believe) render communication between believers and non-believers impossible. A university, as I understand it, is not a multiple-ring circus where rival theologies parade their paradigms in competition, but a place where reasonable men argue with each other seeking mutual understanding and insights. All views should participate in this process but all participants should subscribe to these ground rules of common enterprise in reasoning.

In short, I would like to see our department pay more attention to an expanded view of economics in line with the pluralistic approach which has been its best tradition; but I do not interpret this as an attack on "neo-classical" analysis (which must be taught and learned) nor as an assignment of quotas to "radical economists." Indeed, a staffing policy aimed at filling "political" slots would be fatal to the intellectual quality of the department. What matters is increased concern with the broader aspects of economics and the socio-political forces in which the economic processes are embedded, a concern which should be shared (as should be that for other phases of economics) by people representing a variety of views and interests.

Richard A. Musgrave is professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Science and the Law School.