These documents are a chronicle, and a record, of the submission that the UK-based Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) made to the UK’s ‘Quality Assurance Authority’ (QAA) in response to a request for views on the ‘Research Assessment Exercise’ (RAE) which is the framework for awarding grants to economics researchers. The documents shed clear light on the reason that the economics profession completely failed to anticipate or understand the crash, highlighting the urgency for a ground-up reform of the way economics is taught, researched, and practiced. The submission was made in February 2008. No response was received and there is no indication that any of its recommendations were either implemented or even influenced the QAA’s procedures.
Six months later, on September 15th 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the global financial crisis ensued.
Published later as ‘Submission from the Association for Heterodox Economics to the International Benchmarking Review on Research Assessment’ in Lee, F. and Wolfram Elsener (eds) (2008) Publishing, Refereeing, Ranking, and the Future of Heterodox Economics, Special issue of On the Horizon (Vol. 16.4, December 2008) ISSN: 1074-8121