معرفی
Anwar Shaikh serves as Professor of Economics at the Economics Department within the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at The New School for Social Research. His academic career spans several decades, marked by significant contributions to heterodox economics and critical analyses of mainstream economic theories.
- Current position: Professor of Economics
- Institution: The New School for Social Research
- Previous affiliations: Columbia University (resigned during 1968 protests)
Professor Shaikh's research centers on the fundamental dynamics of capitalism, with particular emphasis on profit as the central driving force of the system. His work challenges neoclassical economic frameworks, especially the concept of perfect competition, which he contrasts with his theory of 'real competition'—a process more akin to warfare than the idealized ballet depicted in mainstream economics. He examines capitalism as a unity of order and disorder, identifying inherent patterns including business cycles and long waves that emerge from the system's intrinsic dynamics rather than external shocks. His scholarship critically engages with capital theory, distribution theory, and the measurement problems associated with aggregate production functions, famously demonstrated through his 'humbug production function' critique of Robert Solow's work.
Shaikh's methodological approach rejects the perfection/imperfection duality prevalent in orthodox economics, arguing instead for starting analysis from the reality of economic processes rather than idealized abstractions. His intellectual influences include classical political economists (Smith, Ricardo, Marx), Keynes, and the Cambridge Capital Controversy scholars like Joan Robinson and Geoff Harcourt. His work demonstrates how profit rate equalization tendencies interact with shaping factors like wage dynamics, technical change, and institutional arrangements to produce capitalism's characteristic patterns of growth, crisis, and transformation.
As an educator, Professor Shaikh encourages students to maintain intellectual openness while critically examining economic theories. He advocates for understanding how the world actually works as a foundation for meaningful social change, emphasizing that policies built on false theoretical foundations have real consequences for people's lives. His teaching spans historical economic thought, standard economic theory, econometrics, and alternative approaches including econophysics.
