In November 2011, amid the Occupy Movement that followed the 2008–9 recession, seventy-odd Harvard students walked out of their introductory economics course taught by Greg Mankiw, author of the world’s bestselling economics textbooks. The students protested that Mankiw’s faith-in-markets economics had little relevance for their crisis-riddled world. The walkout proved more than a campus stunt. Similar protests followed in universities across the world. Senior academics threw in support. New networks and organisations emerged, proposing alternative economics curricula, forums, and ideas. Their aim, as one campaigner put it, was to combat the ‘fantasy world of neoclassical economics – a faith-based religion of perfect markets, enlightened consumers and infinite growth that shapes the fates of billions’.
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