February 2015
Is anything worth keeping in microeconomics ?
2002
Debate about microeconomics
June 2000
Open letter from economic students
2000
These "wonderful" American textbooks
2000
So what are rational expectations exactly?
2000
About game theory
2000
Is there a problem with mathematics?
2000
What is the use of microeconomics?
2000
The Fitoussi Report
In June 2000, we, students in universities and "grandes écoles", launched a protest against the teaching of economics in France. We complained that our current courses were not giving us the means to understand real economic problems. Indeed, most of the time our courses only focused on "imaginary worlds". Furthermore, we noticed that even if mathematics are a useful tool in economics, they had become an end it itself. Their role was confined to giving a scientific gloss to a discipline which had many difficulties in explaining reality (growth, unemployment, etc...).
In front of this situation, we decided to react and wrote an "open letter" to the people in charge of the teaching of economics in France. The "open letter" gathered several hundreds of signatures from French and foreign economic students, as well as teachers. The press (Le Monde first, then several others) made this issue public by releasing articles on our protest. In order to strengthen our initiative, we created this web-site so that students around the world could find out more about the "French movement". Thus, our initial petition is currently being signed in several countries (among others Australia, Canada, Spain, and the USA).
This web site is done by the students who initially launched the open letter. It is aimed at facilitating contact and dialogue between people, who, all over the world, are both critical of economics studies and of the current theoretical state of the discipline
In this way, we would like to foster international protests by sharing experiences and thoughts. Our web-site is meant to be a "world platform" to debate economics. You will also find texts related to the teaching of economics as well as analysis on economic theories. Please feel free to make any comments or to give ideas, and to share your point of view on the state of economics studies in your university or in your country. We hope to hear from you soon.