Built-in Normativity in Economics and its Teaching

History, methodology, and philosophy provide insights into the normative concepts, tools, and frameworks with which we engage in complex socio-technical practices in economics. History helps in the pursuit of methodological and philosophical reasoning in economics by providing cases regarding the practice of the discipline. It gives insights into how economists have thought about and modeled phenomena, and how economics was constructed in the first place. In this chapter, I draw on my teaching experience in a course at Utrecht University School of Economics, entitled “Contemporary Economics in Historical Perspective.” In this course, we examine how modern economics has arrived at its current state through the adoption of technical tools, by studying the historical context and original texts from the twentieth century. Drawing on the course material, I argue for the normativity that tools bring to contemporary economic analysis. I present a selection of accounts from the history, methodology, and philosophy of economics that underpin my thinking and teaching at Utrecht. I then introduce the course and use exemplary cases to illustrate how these accounts contribute to the understanding of economics students. I conclude with a note on the importance of conveying this perspective on embedded normativity to economics students.