John Quiggan on zombie economics

Jenny Lovric

This article was published in Living Ethics: issue 82 summer 2010

Why do some ideas not die when they’re clearly past their use-by date?

In his presentation, Professor John Quiggan took the audience on a rollercoaster ride through some of the recent economic theories that just don’t seem to die and may need “a double shot to the head” before they’re finally put to rest.

Quiggan’s talk looked at the sources and consequences of some much-heralded market-based economics - such as the efficient market hypothesis, trickle-down economics, and privatisation amongst others - exposing the evidence-free zone that many unwieldy economic theories are based on; and their extraordinary resilience to change in the face of clear and present failure.

Especially relevant after some local smugness over Australia’s alleged remarkable (truly unbelievable, really) recovery from the global economic crisis, the audience was left scratching their heads about why these theories seem to persist.

Despite all the evidence pointing to the fact that many of these theories are hopelessly imperfect and should be dead, Quiggan points to the often depressing vested interests (think: the wealth/finance industry) that keeps re-animating them. I had an image of the armless and legless knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, taunting his opponent with “come back and fight - I’m not dead yet!”