A ortodoxia económica e a esquerda

Heterodox economics & the left, por Chris Dillow:

[C]onsider the following:

 - Conventional economics tells us that austerity depresses output at the zero bound.

 - More open borders would not make British workers worse off; this is factor price equalization.

 - Thousands of high-paid financiers are overpaid charlatans; this is the implication of the efficienct market hypothesis, which says that stock-pickers can't beat the market in risk-adjusted terms.

 - The diminishing marginal utility of wealth implies that progressive taxation is welfare-enhancing.

- Drug legalization would improve the lot of young black men; this follows from the presumption that markets work less badly than state interventions.

- Complaints by Owen Jones and Aditya Chakrabortty about crony capitalism are  consistent with basic public choice economics - that political power will go to the highest bidder.

- My scepticism about managerialist hierarchies owes more to Hayek's point about the limitations of centralized knowledge and control than it does to my Marxism.

All these points imply that you can adopt a position well to the left of the Labour party whilst being a quite orthodox economist.

Heterodox laziness (or worse), por Simon Wren-Lewis:

Many economists and non-economists of the right try and portray mainstream economics as naturally supportive of their political programme. Right wing think tanks name themselves after one of the pioneers of economics. It is normally nonsense: mainstream economics is all about market failure, diminishing marginal utility favours redistribution etc. Of course there are counter examples (Pareto optimality), so it would be wrong to say that economics leans to the left as well.  
However when some of those on the left say yes, mainstream economics is all the things that those on the right say it is, they share a mutual conspiracy to distort the truth. When you are trying hard to convince policy makers and journalists that what those on the right are arguing for is not implied by mainstream thought, people from the left pop up to undermine what you say.

That last sentence probably exaggerates the importance of heterodox economics. In my view heterodox economics is far more dangerous in giving young students that lean to the left a distorted view of the mainstream which can have lasting damage. Been there, done that (briefly). I actually think that heterodox economists have some important criticisms to make, and I also think that mainstream macro orthodoxy can often discourage such fundamental criticism. However pretending mainstream economics is something that it is not just devalues these criticisms.

Já agora, a respeito das implicações da hipotese dos mercados eficientes, este meu post de 2011.