'There is no better source of ethical insight than the novels of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Henry James, and the other great realists. ' If this were true, we would expect poor illiterate people to be less capable of ethical insight and empathy than well read people- more particularly those who have spent a lot of money attending Prof Morson's lectures. There was a view, in the Nineteenth Century, that the suffrage should be restricted to educated people from the class represented and addressed by the 'great realist novels' of the Nineteenth Century. However, this 'bildungsburgertum' proved bad stewards of the Economy. Jane Austen's readers were comfortable with slavery on the West Indian plantations which supplied their wealth. It was perfectly possible to read Tolstoy and Doestoevsky while firmly believing that the backwardness and anarchic inclinations of the Russian peasants and lower order of townsfolk meant that autocracy was inevitable. Even Henry James- an American- showed little sympathy for the poorer classes in England. Princess Cassamassima shows little faith in the intelligent working man's ability to support socially beneficial political change rather than plunge into anarchic terrorism.



There were some novelists- Balzac most notably- who were acute observers of the Economic scene. At a later point, some authors made a systematic study of Economic and Social conditions and wrote books and plays which advanced a progressive agenda. Bernard Shaw and H.G Wells are examples. The former played a big role in the creation of the L.S.E which in turn gave a boost to a new type of Econometric research.



There are good economists who have used rational choice hermeneutics to illumine literature. Robert Aumann, a Nobel laureate, has shown how the Talmud applied Game theory. But there is no evidence that Economists with a good knowledge of Literature- like Amartya Sen- make better policy prescriptions as a result. On the contrary, literary culture can go hand in hand with an elitist attitude which considers only 'top down' measures to be feasible.



Do Economists think they 'have nothing to learn from anyone'? No, they seek to increase their debt to Pure Mathematics, to Statistical Physics, and to paradigms from Evolutionary Biology.

The truth is, the type of Operations Research associated with a Planned Economy- such as the US and the UK used during the Second World war- did make lives better for ordinary people because such applied mathematical techniques enabled a better use of scarce resources.



There was a type of 'Historical' or 'Institutionalist' Economics which gave a higher place to Literature as developing 'Verstehen'. However, it was useless. When applied to developing countries like India, it made terrible policy prescriptions and painted a gloomy picture.

