Silver Persian said:
Urm...I don't think all of the political economists at usyd are marxists. Frank Stilwell, Bryan rafferty, Gabrielle Meagher and Dick Bryan (from memory) are more institutional economists - in the tradition of Galbraith and Veblen - than Marxists.
Political Economy is code word for lefty economics - which includes, but is not limited to, Marxism
I know that UNSW has a political economy faculty, which I'd assume has the same political orientation as USyd, but I'm not sure
Actually 'Political Economy' is also code for Keynesianism at other unis (and just that). Apparently that's what it's like at At UNSW, they apparently don't go much further than Keynesianism (people apparently walk away from ECOP at UNSW ... as milton friedman fans!). ECOP at Usyd is much, much wider in scope, there are very few departments that teach what they do. Depending on the unit, apart from neo-marxism (or macro and micro, and fiscal vs monetary in ECON), in ECOP you'll encounter post-keynesianism, post-Ricardian, the french 'regulation' (eng: normalisation) school, spatial political economy (or economic geography), ecological political economy, and perhaps most importantly, institutional political economy (or institutional economics). And you'll also encounter feminist political economy (and for those of you who hate this, if it's taught, it's usually only for a week or so).
The main upshot of all of this is not that it sets out to be"leftist" economics, but its heterodox - they really do try to teach you as many schools of thought as possible. And certainly, in the classes I've been in anyway, there have still been people who've walked away remaining as neoclassical fans (whose support for the orthodoxy has actually grown even stronger after having a taste of what else is out there). That said, I've done pre-honours classes, which are in a completely different league to the 'pass' classes.
ECOP is an intellectual pursuit more than anything else, but in terms of career outcomes, I think most go on to the public service, journalism, research, think tanks, etc (rather than UBS or the like). It depends on the individual of course, but there are actually ECOP grads out there at the likes of JP Morgan, etc.
As much as ECOP may seem like leftist 'indoctrination' to some, the irony is that it explicitly teaches you to look out for political agendas and values behind economic discourses. At the very least, ECOP lecturers are upfront about their political values - unlike other departments, they don't make any token efforts to appear completely, irrefutably "scientific" (the feasibility of which in, the field of "economics", is one of the many conceptual debates that is perhaps more explicitly covered in ECOP. It's one of the more philosophical reasons why you don't rote learn half as much mathematical formulas in ECOP as you do in ECON).
At the same time, there's another irony to it all. One of the lessons that I've probably gleamed from ECOP is that change often comes from within the orthodoxy. And the orthodoxy is ECON. It's one of the reasons why Keynes is heaps more famous than the other schools mentioned earlier - Keynes was part of the orthodoxy of his time. If I could start again (and I had more mathematical ability), I'd probably force myself to try do a bit of ECON just so I could more confidently engage with the so-called orthodoxy. At the same time, there's a famous quote from Joan Robinson along the lines of - "I don't do math, therefore I think". So I have absolutely no regrets.
