New Millennium Economics: How Did It Get This Way, and What Way is It?

Abstract

This paper is a discussion of the changes in the economics profession that occurred (or at least are suggested will occur) between 2000 and 2050. Structural changes include the growth of virtual universities, the movement of the center of economics out of the U.S. and the shrinking of traditional graduate economics programs as we know them today, and their replacement by public policy and specialty programs. Changes in content include an increase in simulation work, experimental work, and the replacement of a neoclassical vision with a New Millennium vision based on a complexity foundation in which patterns develop spontaneously.