The Korean Economic Forum
Economics as a Discipline of ‘Korean Social Science’
Yong Jin Kim (Ajou University)Year 2016Vol. 9No. 3
Abstract
Making economics as a discipline of “Korean social science” means to modifythe mainstream economics to be more usefully utilized to understand, explain,and make forecasts about Korea’s economic phenomena as well as to makegovernment policies to improve its welfare. For this, economists in Korea facetwo problems. First, the mainstream economics relies on mathematics too muchto understand the whole picture of economic phenomena. Second, since Koreahas its own culture and history unique and different from those of US andBritain, that are the birth and nurturing places of mainstream economics,mainstream economics does not tend to fit in Korea’s economic phenomena. Tosolve the first problem, we put an emphasis on pluralism and critical thinkingnot only for research of economists but also for education of students. For thesecond problem, self-sustaining habitat, that generates researchers and studentscommitted to ‘Korean economics’ continuously over time, should be constructedto study Korea’s unique and critical economic problems in a focused andconsistent manner. For this, proper incentive mechanisms should be structured.