George Soros is taking the liberal arts approach to the way economics is being taught.
As a counter to the free-market and deregulation theorists that dominate so many university economics programs, the billionaire hedge fund manager Soros is donating $5 million to create a new economics institute at Oxford University.
He believes the influence of these thinkers contributed to the global financial crisis.
Too much of modern economic theory leans on complicated mathematical formulas to anticipate market behavior, said Robert Johnson, a director at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, another Soros-funded education project.
The field needs a broader interdisciplinary approach that includes a spectrum of subjects, such as history, psychology, the natural sciences and literature, said Johnson, according to The Times. Johnson is also a former managing director of Soros Fund Management,
The new institute is drawing its funding from Inet, a New York-based think tank and educational and grant-giving organization founded in October with a $50 million pledge from Soros. The purpose of the Inet is to foster debate about the value of government financial regulation.