Economics Forged by Mass Communication and Scarcities. New Theoretical Framework—New Policy Prescriptions—New Scientific Thinking

Abstract

Economics does no longer deliver analyses and solutions to problems confronting the global economy and contrary to expectation it does not move towards general equilibrium. Two big transformations take place: Mass consumption is replaced with mass communication—the era of plenty is replaced by scarcities. Economic models have so far proven inadequate to tackle the turnaround from growth & distribution of benefits to burden sharing leaving policy makers without advice and guidelines. The idea of economic thinking (homo oeconomicus) introduced by Adam Smith does not reflect realities in the beginning of the 21 st century. Concentration of economic activities in the hands of relatively few operators rules out competition in the sense of a free market. Distribution of income and wealth is steered by a mismatch between supply and demand of skills rewarding those who by chance have the “right” skills. The concept of work is changing fast as is the notion of companies with jobs being performed outside companies eroding the well-established Theory of the Firm. Bringing in other social sciences it becomes clear that people are less motivated by economic incentives than presumed, which makes it necessary to broaden economic analyses and policy making. Interdisciplinary and intersectoral thinking incorporating human behavior crowds out pure economic reasoning. In a longer term perspective the way ahead may be to base economic thinking and models on big data analyzing how data are linked to each other without any prior assumption of theory. The future for economics may therefore be to go from deduction to induction.