Brad DeLong has mused on the purpose of a course in political economy:
This is where we cash in our winning intellectual bets, tie all the threads together, and come up with running code for a rough-and-ready framework for thinking about everything that happens at the crossroads where history and politics meet economies and sociologies in a world where village elders along the Zambezi lecture the principal deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund on the implications of the Republican convention.
I sat in on a few lectures for LSE’s graduate-level course in this stuff over the last year (I may yet take it formally as my second optional) and I have to say that I find Brad’s vision a lot more interesting. Perhaps I should be doing my PhD at Berkeley?
Jim Hacker jibes start to sting? Imagine how Sir Humphrey would react to an American university. If you do study at Berkeley you might want to practice spelling it …
🙂 Thanks for the correction (fixed now). The Jim Hacker jibes are probably fair game. Sir Humphrey would have looked down his nose at LSE, let alone the US unis. But then, Sir Humphrey always did strike me as a character stuck in the mentality of Empire.
If I recall correctly, worse than attending the LSE, Hacker graduated with a third …
I’ve never understood the point of third-class honours in Britain, especially since they’re actually fourth-class (second being broken into two halves). Just say “pass” and be done with it!