One can cheer along with your columnist Soumaya Keynes, but only if one focuses on the last five words of her headline: “Economists are trying to be less male, pale and stale” (Opinion, January 12).
The problem is actually the first word. With it, her piece betrays economists’ parochial mindset, equivalent to that of a Ninth Avenue New Yorker’s view of the world. Namely, what happens in US economics — with the broader “rich world” barely an echo — is what happens in economics.
But economics in the non-rich world is not a residual. And topping its woes is the presumption there is nothing general to be learnt there because all such knowledge has been unearthed by the male, pale and stale profession.
Insular economists of both genders need to get into their heads — and their headlines — that the world is out there.
Peter Doyle
Washington, DC, US
