Economists are peculiar creatures. Last week a large posse of them descended on Berlin for the third annual conference of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), a think-tank co-founded by investor and philanthropist George Soros in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis.
As I roamed through the various sessions and gatherings, pointy-headed folk squinted at me and rattled off facts and figures that gave them the sort of thrill I get from seeing spring flowers in bloom. The field of economics is known for attracting Asperger’s-spectrum wonks better at formulating financial models than the flow of human interaction. But if the Berlin forum is any indication, the field is now fitfully reorienting itself: it wants to understand those fascinating and often irrational beings known as “people.”
Tellingly, the title of the conference was inspired by Milton. Not Milton Friedman, but John Milton: “Paradigm Lost: Rethinking Economics and Politics.” Intriguingly, the brochure opened with a passage from Book XII of Paradise Lost describing Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden -- the moment when they look back wistfully on their former paradise, but then, teary-eyed, forge ahead, knowing that “the world was all before them.”
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