Post-Autistic Economics

Marginal Revolution has a post on whether the term "Post-Autistic Economics" is insulting.

I would say yes because the term Post-Autistic Economics implies that Autism = Bad, but this is not necessarily true. Autistics have different brain workings than neurotypical people do. Sometimes parts of their brain function far better than do the comparable brain parts of neurotypicals. This has allowed some autistics to made spectacular achievements in part because of their autism.

For example, according to this BBC article both Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton might have had autism.


Vernon L. Smith, an economics Nobel Prize winner, has Asperger's Syndrome which is a form of autism. Interestingly his work focuses on how markets operate in the real-world outside of the sometimes unrealistic assumptions of traditional neoclassical economics. Perhaps the economics profession needs more not less autism.