Symposium The Dismal (Delusional and Dangerous) “Science” of Economics and the “Capture” of Public Administration: Toward a Public-Spirited Public Management Economics

Economics shares with other approaches to human governance the potential to be “dismal, delusional, or dangerous” when dogma replaces reason in decisions about when to apply economic principles. A reading of the classical economic literature shows that even classical economics has not supported the indeed dismal, delusional, and dangerous turn that contemporary mainstream economics has adopted. What economists (and especially public administrators who engage the discipline) have forgotten is the original welfare economics tradition that has its roots at least in Adam Smith and other classic works in the field, and is far more relevant to public administration.