Author: Edet B. Akpakpan
Volume: 52 Issue No:1 Year:2010

Abstract: This paper deals with the part that economics and economists have played in the current global financial crisis and the implications of the crisis for the future of the subject. It examines the practices in the financial markets that triggered the crisis, including subprime lending, securitization and transactions in derivatives, the role of the market system of economic organization in the behaviour of the financial markets, and the need to rethink economics as the world searches for solution to the crisis. It draws attention to some important aspects of
economics that need to be re-examined, which include the teaching of the ideas that define the subject, the content and delivery of economics programmes in institutions, research agenda and methods, and the basic definition of the subject.