If you can imagine an economist forbidden to use the words "assumption" and "assume" you will understand why business schools are separated from economics departments. When I was teaching marketing the first two lectures had to be devoted to rubbishing everything they had been taught in Economics 101. The academic marketing literature now has an active strand discussing the complete separation of marketing theory and education from new/Neoclassical economics. (Try to start with the assumptions of a perfect market etc etc and talking about advertising!)
BTW profs of finance get mega salaries because they teach yuppies how to help multimillionaires become billionaires: very practical in late finance capitalism, even if utterly parasitic from any other viewpoint.
-----Original Message----- From: Rakesh Bhandari (part)
>
>Jason, what deficiences in economic departments led to the establishment
>of business departments? At Berekeley, I sat in on an international trade
>course in the business dept taught by a terribly lucid economist Robert
>Feenstra.More inerested in how to use anti-dumping laws or induce the
>govt to negotiate VERs, those students who were returning from the
>business world looked on in amusement at the different arguments about
>producer and consumer surplus which are created and lost through free
>trade or the problems posed by the Leontiev paradox to H-O
>theorems or the factor-price theorem. Then Feenstra, who was a great
>teacher, would pose the problem of greater income inequality (though he
>tended not to dwell on the fact that skill premium is based on steeper
>wage falls for the so-called unskilled--what a premium); Feenstra, a
>rather honest guy, would suggest that economists didn't really know what
>the causes were and that skill-biased technological change, which seemed
>to be synomous with computers but was so ill-defined that I began to feel
>sorry for economists, was really a cop out to explain what the economists
>didn't understand.It seemed to me that such human capital explanations
>take hold only because skilled (ha, ha) professionals understand their
>greater income as a sign of moral superiority (especially vis a vis
>blacks, one suspects), as their reward for having had the foresight to
>have deferred present consumption to enjoy their standing in the worlds.
>Senior adapted to the world of the petty bourgeoisie.
>
> Of all this nitty gritty about income inequality and its causes, the
>business students seemed not to care one whit. But then when Feenstra said
>that businesses must outsource as much as possible to protect whatever
>domestic employment base they had, interest perked up. Now he had their
>attention. There were also nods of assent that unemployment insurance was
>a waste as workers didn't use it to relocate to booming regions. I must
>say that I left with the impression that economics and business schools
>are something of a sick joke. I hadn't been so creeped out since I had
>been a Ph.D. student in Government at Harvard.
> Best,
>Rakesh
>
>
>