Teaching political economy to students of property economics: mission impossible?

Abstract

It is widely held by economists that students of (property) economics self-select to be taught mainstream economics. My experience of teaching a pluralist subject called 'property and political economy' (PPE) has proved to be entirely different. Although some students initially described it as 'irrelevant', major pedagogic revisions have considerably improved students' ratings of the subject. This experience calls into question the view that property economics students are seeking only vocational training to pursue personal wealth. However, it is a mistake to assume that students have an intrinsic desire to study pluralist political economy, even if taught effectively.

Rethinking Development Economics: Problems and Prospects of Georgist Political Economy

“…Primarily centred on giving poorer nations preferential access to global markets, fair trade advocates would leave the system of property and rent under free trade unchanged (for a review of fair-trade literature, see Valiente-Riedl 2017). For GPE, neither free trade nor fair trade provides an adequate basis for progress (Obeng-Odoom 2017a, 2020c.…”

“…This is explicable in terms of the close relationship between property developers, the class of academics who double as speculators and real estate investors, while seeking to make private property in land look natural in their courses on real estate finance. The well-documented effects of such courses are to slow down the uptake of GPE and to keep students ignorant or limiting their access to critical insights from GPE (Gaffney 1994;Haila 1988Haila , 2017Obeng-Odoom 2016b, 2017a.…”