Is economic teaching keeping up with the changing economy? This column presents a new way of teaching economics in light of the continuing crises. It argues that if we are to create a better-informed public debate we must begin by improving the economics curriculum and our students’ ability and their willingness to communicate about economic ideas and issues.

Five years after Lehman’s collapse, economics is under fire both from outside and inside the profession for irrelevance, arrogance and more. This column introduces a new Vox debate focused on two questions: What’s the use of economics, and how should we be teaching it to the next generation?

Has economics failed us? Should economists have seen this crisis coming? This column offers a defence of contemporary economics against those demanding forecasts of crises and complaining about the profession’s mathematical intensity. It says that the economy’s extraordinary complexity necessitates that economists remain modest, not that they abandon their training for a multidisciplinary melting pot.

In a new Policy Insight, CEPR Research Fellow Daron Acemoglu provides his views on what intellectual errors have been made and what lessons these errors offer moving forward from the crisis of 2008.

The global crisis is a challenge to and an opportunity for the economics profession. Here one of the profession’s most innovative thinkers reflects on how and why economists failed to see the crisis coming, what they should tell governments to do about it, and what young economists should be working on to help us avoid future crises.

Economics is mathematically intensive, and mathematically underprepared economics students are sure to struggle. Unfortunately, this column reports, at least one UK remedial course did little to help its students.