From the horse’s mouth

24 min readOct 10, 2020

Unpacking concepts in economic policy with a Singaporean classical liberal

Elinor Ostrom at a press event in 2009 for her Nobel award. Credit John Sommers II /Reuters

For more information about the list of interview questions and the purpose of the interview, see the interview questionnaire and the raw interview audio.

Date/Time : 2020–09–08 21:00–22:00

Interviewee

Donovan Choy Twitter Medium
Author, Classical Liberalist
Donovan is a policy consultant and author of an upcoming book : “Liberalism Unveiled: Forging a New Third Way for Singapore”.

Interviewer

Taylor W Hickem Twitter, Medium, ResearchGate, Kaggle, GitHub, LinkedIn
Researcher, Chemical Engineer, SG Green New Deal
Taylor is an independent consultant researching Green New Deal economic and climate change mitigation policy for Singapore

From the horse’s mouth : Unpacking concepts in economic policy with a Singaporean classical liberalist

This interview is part of a report titled “Freedom for who?”- a critique of free market capitalism. Critiquing not for confrontational sake only, but to go beyond and ask the question — “What would an updated economic model look like for the 21st century?” I sense that we may be coming up to a transition point in the way we think about the basic economic model on which our societies operate. In an earlier article, “is greed good? I express my dissatisfaction that it feels as though there isn’t enough time devoted to getting to the difficult, open questions in economic policy where there is a lack of a convincing consensus. My approach in this series is to engage in good faith on the real substantive arguments on both sides and not the superficial, tangential rhetoric that we see in the media, identity politics, mudslinging, etc.. There are points of overlap, but sometimes the discourse is consumed only by the narrow range of topics of disagreement. Instead I am interested in getting deep into the hard questions. So I ask — “What would it look like to synthesize and compile the areas of agreement, what would you end up with?” I had the fortune of being contacted by Donovan Choy, a Singaporean classical liberalist, in response to the article. He agreed to join for an interview-style conversation on topics in neoclassical economics and contemporary economic policy questions relevant for Singapore.

In total we covered six topics in the conversation. The format of the interview was organized into three general topic areas — definitions, models and policy. At the end we had some extra time to explore an extra topic relating to the models — Prisoners Dilemma. There were a total of 10 questions prepared prior to the interview.

Defining classical liberalism
Economic policy spectrum
The Washington Consensus
Behavioral Economics and the Homo Economicus model
Singapore policy — COVID-19, immigration
Prisoner’s Dilemma

Introduction interview, purpose

From the horse’s mouth : Unpacking concepts in economic policy with a Singaporean classical liberalist

Defining classical liberalism
Economic policy spectrum
The Washington Consensus
Behavioral Economics and the Homo Economicus model
Singapore policy — COVID-19, immigration
Prisoner’s Dilemma

Personal introductions

Taylor 03:14–05:30 02:16

Hi Donovan, I’m Taylor Hickem. I’m from oil and gas, my technical education is Chem E from GaTech US. I’ve worked most of my career here in Singapore, Jurong Island. I’m a technical person. I’m passionate about programming, math, and working on complex problems. That’s who I am. Recently in the past 2 years I took a sabbatical to explore a range of new career opportunities in sustainability. I wanted to add some more meaning and purpose to my career because I didn’t think oil and gas was going to do that for me. That took me through a few things. I did some research on vertical farming and then more recently with the IPCC report and climate change mitigation policy. I caught this idea of the Green New Deal which was coming up in the US and I thought — “That’s an interesting catch”. I know what the New Deal was. I know how it works and I can see how it’s related when I saw the line in the IPCC report that read “significant upscaling of investments”. I was like “Oh yea, that’s kind of like the New Deal. I get it — public works projects”. So I asked — ”What would that look like for Singapore? I wrote a brief Medium article and I am still researching. I hope to publish something eventually. This series “Freedom for who?” is looking at the economic foundation on which something like a Green New Deal would be based on. That’s how I got here.

So could you introduce yourself? Specifically — classical liberalism is the label that you use for yourself. Could you tell me what interests you in this topic?.

Donovan 05:30–07:20 01:50

Thanks for having me on. I’m Donovan Choy. Professionally I work in policy consulting. I also pay a lot of attention to policy non-professionally, particularly in Singapore. That’s where I am from and where most of my human capital is invested. Its’ the area I know best and the topics I’m most familiar with. Maybe a bit what I do on that end. This past year I’ve been working on a book with my colleague Bryan “Liberalism unveiled”. The book is a policy book that’s published with World Scientific. We are trying to make an argument in Singapore that both the PAP and the opposition get part of the policy puzzle right, and the other half of the puzzle wrong. This book is a segway into why we believe that policy oriented around classical liberal philosophy is good for Singapore. It is morally just, not just economically efficient.

Classical Liberalism

Donovan 07:20–09:20 02:00

In short Classical liberalism is a political philosophy that emphasizes the importance of both civil and economic freedoms. The emphasis for classical liberals is that it is best achieved when the role of the state is restricted to a set of limited functions — national defense, public infrastructure — roads, provision of basic essentials but not much beyond that. It’s a very free market political philosophy. Classical liberalism believes that societies should be governed by voluntary associations such as — business corporations in the market, civil society, religious association, the family unit. Classical liberalism is not a new philosophy, it has its origins back to the 18th century. The most popular names associated with the philosophy are John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume. More familiar contemporary thinkers in the 20th and 21st century would be Milton Friedman, or Friedrich Von Hayek. Both of them are Nobel Prize winners.

Economic policy spectrum in Singapore

Taylor 09:20–10:50 01:30

Yes, that was one of my first goals is to put some boundaries on these concepts. There is a word — “neoliberalism” that comes up a lot that tends to tag the people you mention, but few people will raise their hand and say “I am a neoliberal”. That was something I picked up on. I saw that you wrote an article about the “two hooligans” on the left and right —

Could you categorize a political spectrum in Singapore from an economic point of view? Particularly the perspectives which would be politically relevant and potentially influence the trajectory of Singapore’s future policy. And on this spectrum, where would this word “neoliberal” fall? Assuming that my assessment is correct that it is a name that nobody seems to want to own.

Donovan 10:50–14:30 03:50

I think you are exactly right. The term “neoliberal” is a term that is banded around a lot in popular discourse. My sense of it is that when it’s being used it tends to be a pejorative. It’s a term of disparagement for those of us who lean more towards the economically right, laissez-faire, more market guided. Personally I tend to avoid using the word “neoliberalism” because of the negative connotation that is attached to it. It’s a very imprecise stand-in term for anything that is remotely to the right of the center of the traditional left-right political spectrum — for example as it is in the US. It covers a broad range of anything from the most hard-core libertarian to the moderate republicans to conservatives. As long as you are slightly to the right of the center you are in the realm of the neoliberal. To be honest it’s a little like when you engage popular discourse and you hear figures on the right labeling anyone on the left as a Communist or a Marxist “oh, you think the government should do something, you are a Commie, a Marxist”. So I think it’s equivalent to the way that “neoliberal” is being used by left-leaning thinkers onto people on the right.

Regarding the political spectrum in Singapore, the most common spectrum is PAP vs everyone else, the coalition of opposition parties. The spectrum is testament to how dominant the Singapore government is. If you try to transpose that to the traditional spectrum in the US, the PAP would sit somewhere on the center right, and the other parties would fall on the center-left for economic policies. There are grey areas such as immigration. Outside Singapore, on immigration you typically see that the ones in favor of restriction are Republicans on the right. In Singapore that is reversed. The PAP tends to be the most open immigration party for reasons of economic growth, whereas the opposition parties have led the charge of “saving jobs for Singaporeans, restricting quotas”. There are a few other nuances but that would be the rough gist of it.

Washington Consensus and Keynesian economists

Taylor 14:30–15:10 00:40

Two follow-up questions. Where would you put the “Washington Consensus” from the World Bank (Birdsall, 2010) and where would you place economists such as Paul Krugman, a self-identified Keynesian economist?

Donovan 15:10–19:10 04:00

I think Paul Krugman would definitely not be a guy associated with the PAP. As far as I know most of his policy proposals are in favor of a huge role for the government. The PAP does spend here and there, and this is as clear as day in the past half-a-year. The amount that they spend relative to other developed democracies, at least compared to the US, is quite minimal.

As for the Washington consensus — it was this policy platform that was popular in the 1980’s after the fall of Communism. The mantra was “If you guys want to emerge from your dirt poor Socialist economies you have to adopt the free market policies that we, the IMF, World Bank recommend to you. For a superficial glance the Washington Consensus (WC) would sit on the economic right. However, there is a subtle distinction that tends to get glossed over. Although the policy descriptions tend to resemble that of the economic right, free market proposals, there is a subtle distinction for how it is being implemented. The WC is a top-down policy telling these guys that “You need to adopt our proposals, you need to adopt low inflation, deregulation”. All of that is coming top down from a transitory state. If you look at free market guys like Hayek or contemporaries thinkers like Milton Friedman, I think at least in their academic work that they would probably find a problem that all of this is imposed top-down. There is a big distinction between advocating for free markets but wanting it to be imposed to-down by the state and advocating for free markets while appreciating the spontaneous and evolutionary process of free markets. That cuts at the distinction between the free market guys on the political right.

There was a famous article by Dani Rodrik (Dani Rodrik, 2006) where he was looking at the result of all of these WC-like proposals. There were a lot of failures. There were economies that adopted these proposals and you don’t see the growth that was promised, and on top of that you look at India and China and they didn’t do the WC proposals and they are spiraling in growth. Clearly there is a problem with these proposals. I think the answer lies in what I was talking about — how you impose these policies. Do you want to see them evolve bottom up?, or do you want to be the game-master of the economy and say “This should be privatized, this should be deregulated, this is the inflation rates that your government should adhere to” I think that makes a world of difference in the free-market argument.

Homo Economicus

Taylor 19:10–24:00 03:50

On to the “classical” economic models. As I understand It’s based on agents who behave rationally and self-interested. Examples are the Solow-Swan, Ramsey-Cass-Koopman but not limited to them. You can create your own classical model so long as it meets these criteria. As the saying goes — “All models are imperfect, some are useful” (George E Box). The actual behavior of humans is that sometimes we can choose to be altruistic or selfish and we have the capacity for all of these things. This is a criticism of these models from the field of Behavioral Economics.

How important are these axioms to the validity to the claims by the models and for policy? To what extent do these claims hinge on the axioms vs the empirical evidence for how humans actually respond? When we say something is “rational” how much of that is rational only in the tautological sense — if a transaction occurred then it was rational b/c that’s what we assume, and if he did it irrationally it must have been pseudo-rational because he had some kind of internal urge, or can we show “yes” we have an objective measure of what a rational decision is and there is evidence that is what is happening? If people were behaving altruistically rather than selfish, would that change anything?

Donovan 24:00–36:30 12:30

These are all important questions. A lot of policy proposals are rooted in methodological disagreement. Methodology is not that exciting. It doesn’t get talked about that often. Let me talk about the Homo Economicus (HE) construct. This is the rational, self-interest, profit maximizing model. When I look at popular discourse, it’s common for me to find some left-leaning journalist thinkers pointing the finger at free-market guys and saying “Hey look, you guys are suggesting all of these proposals that are based on these unrealistic assumptions — HE. As long as you continue to treat humans in this rigid construct you are going to be supplying terrible policy advice”.

I think there is a fundamental problem with this argument. The HE construct is a methodological assumption. When economists are using it, they are not saying that humans in the real world resemble that. They are not saying humans are completely selfish or completely profit-maximizing. Instead, they are saying “OK, the social science is complex, let’s take that assumption and run with that assumption to postulate how the economy would function when everyone is self-interested” Of course there are many problems with HE.

If you have ever taken an Econ-101, the fundamental assumption that cuts at all of these models is that firms and individuals are profit maximizers. There are a whole number of free market economists, particularly Austrian who are critical of this paradigm as well. They use different methods to arrive at pro-market conclusions. It’s true that a lot of free market economists have used these methods to justify their arguments. The best examples are the guys from the Chicago school — Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Garry Becker, etc.. All of these guys are famous Nobel Prize winning economists. All of them were working in the HE neoclassical (NC) paradigm. It’s also true that many anti-market, left-leaning economists are also working in the same methodological paradigm and using it to justify pro-government conclusions. The best examples of these are market failure theorists such as George Ackerlof (Ackerlof, 1970). He wrote in “the market for lemons” about market failures where there is information asymmetry. Francis Bator (Bator, 1958) was another market failure theorist. All of these guys were using NC models with the fundamental assumption that individuals are self interested. The self-interested rational man is not a method that is exclusive to the free market. It’s also being marshalled by progressive economists and political scientists, etc..

On Behavioral economics — it’s interesting. It’s sort of like the market failure argument, but more of an individual failure. It’s similar to the economic debates from 50 years ago that were saying that markets aren’t perfect, they are breaking down, that’s why the government should step in and correct the market. I’ve just finished writing a chapter a few months ago on a few of these arguments. The starting point of BE is a methodological positioning away from NC. It’s saying — “Look, you guys have been doing economics all wrong this entire time, psychology has been producing volumes of research that show humans don’t behave this way, and you guys are just ignoring all of that research. You do your self-interested rational-choice models and you’re just ignoring the blatant fact that humans are biased and bounded by heuristics. Because individuals behave so flawed and irrationally, there is some onus for the government to intervene to nudge them towards heating healthy food or exercising more, or saving money, etc”

What I find the biggest problem of BE is that It’s still hitched to the neoclassical project. Austrians have questioned this benchmark. The line of questioning goes like this. “If you think this is a myth, why are you holding that as the evaluative standard?” It’s like saying — superman doesn’t exist, but I’m going to judge you according to the standards of superman, and that’s where the onus for governments to intervene and nudge people come in. This is not a criticism not exclusive to the Austrian economists. Goette Lorenz has an issue with the new BE paradigm pushed by Kahneman, Sunstein, Ariely. The new BE project is being conducted in a way that omits the institutional context in which people make decisions.

For example — there is a famous BE paper by Richard Thaler — who runs a bunch of experiments that found that if we auto-enroll employees in a savings scheme that we lead to conclusions of welfare improving — saving more money. It’s an experiment done in a very controlled environment. It’s true, you have proved this in a controlled environment, but in the real world there are other mechanisms that help people from wasteful spending. You may find cultural context where frugality is a virtue and other mechanisms that encourage saving. If you look at financial institutions where we have credit cards — when you sign up for it you are prompted with — “how much of a limit do you want to place on this?” That’s an example where markets help to curb that kind of extravagant and wasteful behavior. Some, not all BE, look at a couple of individuals spending too much money, eating too much bad food and jump to the conclusion that this is an individual failure and the government needs to step in and save them from themselves. The BE project moves a little too quickly from the methodological starting point to where the role governments need to play.

Taylor 35:30–35:55 00:25

Let me make sure I heard you right. Are you saying that while they are uncovering some interesting scientific findings, the jump that they are making in terms of policies -to you it seems like a big jump. Did I get that right?

Donovan 35:55–36:30 00:35

Right, one thing is that it moves too quickly if you start with the methodological starting point. Sure, people are imperfect. All economists at least intuitively would agree that is the case. It moves far too quickly though to the policy implication that governments should setup nudge units. I think there are hundreds of nudge units set up around the world.

Taylor 36:30–36:40 00:10

I get the sense it’s also popular with the PAP in Singapore too.

Donovan 36:35–37:20 00:45

Yes they are. You know the traditional criticism of the PAP is that they are paternalistic. 20–30 years ago they weren’t going to nudge you, they would just ban things out right. Today, at least there is an improvement with the trendy BE, “you know what, we will nudge you, but not ban it out right”. It’s still paternalism but a different stripe.

Taylor 37:20–37:40 00:20

I think I understood. So for you the criticism is two parts — one is that methodologically they are skipping a few steps, the second is a moral issue of paternalism that the state is deciding things?

Donovan

Right.

COVID-19 recovery

Taylor 37:40–38:40 01:00

Let’s start with recovery which is at the top of all of our minds. Did we ever think we were going to end up in a global pandemic.

What should be the priorities for the pandemic? What are the upcoming challenges that Singapore should be prepared for. What should success look like and how would that be measured?

Donovan 38:40–42:20 03:40

This is a tough question, I probably am not qualified enough to answer every aspect of that question. My observations based on how the PAP is reacting to the Covid-19 pandemic is that over the course of Feb-Mar-Apr-May they have released a total of 4x annual budget in spending which is unprecedented in the country’s history. SG Gov prides itself for fiscal balance and not overspending. When I look at this amount of spending and I do a comparison with other developed economies, one thing that sticks out to me is that Singapore government spending is heavily focused on business recovery. Something like 70–80% goes to businesses in the form of wage subsidies for employees — rental waiver, loan schemes to keep businesses afloat. This is in direct contrast with a country like the US where a huge proportion of their spending is going to unemployment benefits -which means that it is not going to businesses, it’s going to US citizens. I see the rationale for why PAP does that. They are trying to adapt the economy to a post pandemic world. One of main predictions for the post pandemic world is that it is going to be more digital, a lot more technology being used. The spending the PAP government is doing is going to re-training, re-skilling workers. Not just middle aged PMET but also university graduates. They have apprenticeships where graduates can learn a new skill in an industry that 5 years later would be relevant when the pandemic has died down. It’s reflective of the PAP government’s approach that is very pro-business orientation, which is their traditional philosophy for how to bring wealth to the country and enrich the masses overtime. If the government provides the foundation where businesses don’t collapse, or are even uplifted, then that would sow the kind of economic activity that would provide jobs and general prosperity for ordinary Singaporeans. It’s a very pro-business orientation.

Taylor 42:20–42:40 00:20

Do you have an idea for yourself what the best policy would look like? Are you saying that the way they are going is the best way to go?

Donovan 42:40–44:50 02:30

I get both sides of the argument. The government is saying if we give it to the citizens, probably a lot of it might be saved, or it may be spent in industries that may not be relevant in the future. Some of the other approaches that economies like the US is taking — “We need to keep Americans alive first of all because people are getting thrown out of a job”. The US is not like Scandinavia where there are strong union laws and social welfare nets. They didn’t need to do that in Finland and Denmark and so in those countries a lot of the extra spending is free to go to businesses. It’s just not like the US at all. It’s a very different economic structure, very different forms of capitalism.

If you had a crystal ball and foresee that the virus and the economy would recover in the short term, then it would make sense to funnel money directly to citizens in the short term because businesses will shortly resume as per normal rather than what the business world is now calling “a new normal”. Whereas if the pandemic is going to last for a while, it would make more sense to do what the SG government is doing, to funnel spending towards adaptation to a post-COVID world.

Immigration

Taylor 44:50–46:20 01:30

Some may argue that Singapore’s immigration system is stratified. I came in on the Employment Pass. I was covered under the Employment Act (EA). Many of the people I worked with are not covered under the EA, for example foreign domestic workers.

What are the potential cumulative economic consequences of this policy over the long run both from purely economic measures — cost of living, labor wages, and also indirect consequences either political, diplomacy? Also from the perspective of ethnic cohesion in Singapore as it’s something that we pride ourselves in, but if it goes wrong it could potentially be an existential threat because we have so many different cultures all in one spot. So curious what you think about this segregated, stratified immigration policy?

Donovan 46:20–51:00 04:40

I think it’s regrettable. As a classical liberal I’m very open to immigration. If a foreigner wants to come into Singapore, in general there should be as few barriers as possible. Even in Singapore which is one of the more liberal immigration policies, there are barriers such as the S-pass, the E-pass systems. Alex Nowrasteh from the Cato Institute has a very good paper on how market-oriented and also how liberal Singapore’s immigration policy is relative to the rest of the developed world. But off the top of my head there is a kind of contradiction because the Singaporean narrative is built on multiculturalism. At the same time we have this migrant population that are being segregated away from society. Of course if you confront a Singaporean about this they will say — “Oh I don’t hate immigrants they can come to Singapore and work”. If you started to ask them if they were willing to put up with dormitories around their estates, they might have a little bit of a problem with that — it’s the “not in my backyard” logic. Some might say “You know what, they can come to work, but they need to respect our cultures. They need to be less rowdy in public”, all these relatively trivial concerns.

The best example of Singaporeans being generally insulated from the blue collar community can be seen in the GE just a few months ago. Going into the elections I thought that the COVID outbreaks in the dorms would be a massive issue, but when you follow the discourse it turns out it was barely an issue. At most it became a talking point from the opposition to criticise the PAP. Other than that, it was not the hot issue of the election. Instead, they talked about how Ivan Lim was not fit for the PAP seat because he had a bad reputation, people coming out saying that he was an arrogant person. The other topics were things like Lee Hsien Yang joining the opposition party. I thought it would be hot, but apparently not. I see this as evidence that Singaporeans generally don’t care about migrant workers and this is not a criticism of the PAP, it is more a criticism of the general attitude of Singaporeans. The government does segment the migrant population away from most of the locals, but they only do it insofar as the locals desire that. It’s a regrettable thing. I would like to see more ethnic integration. Of course it should be done carefully and slowly over the years, but it’s to the point that Singaporeans don’t even want that to happen. To be honest, I do give the PAP a lot of credit for the way it already accommodates migrant workers even though it segments them away from the main population. Migrant workers are still living in way better conditions than they are in developed countries.

Decentralization, Elinor Ostrom

Taylor 52:20–52:25 00:05

Have you read Governing the Commons? Or any of her other work? What lessons can be learned from the Prisoner’s dilemma. Tragedy of the commons is a nice allegory of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Ostrom formalizes Hardin’s problem statement that there are two choices — the state or the firm. She provides some definition for what that means. The question is — is there a 3rd alternative? It seems some of the free market literature leans into Hardin’s argument so what happens if there is a 3rd alternative? Does that change anything?

Donovan 52:25–58:30 06:05

I’m a huge fan of Ostrom’s work. I think that her research leads to a lot of classical liberal conclusions. I’ve read more of her select papers and maybe a few select chapters, not the whole book. She’s tough to read, very technical. Hardin’s argument can either come to either pro or anti market conclusions. The pro-market conclusion would be — “You need to privatize it”. The anti-government says “you need to create a public space around it and govern the use of it carefully and methodically. So I think that his work has been used to go towards different political conclusions. The brilliance of Ostrom’s work is that it cuts right at the dichotomy. She says “you know what, the tragedy of the commons is real but if you look across the world there are a number of instances it’s not actually happening and it’s because they are governed by decentralized communities”.

She’s a very inductive thinker who has spent years out there doing empirical research. She looks across the world — forestry systems in Industry, irrigation systems in Nepal, policing in the US. She looks at so much empirical research and she realizes — “Hey you know what — Garret Hardin’s tragedy of the commons concept doesn’t really hold when we look at many places where there is no central regulation and no top-down ownership. You don’t see the tragedy of the commons going on in these places”. I think Ostrom’s answer for why that is the case is that ownership is taking place in the Polycentric context (Carlisle, 2019, Ostrom, 2009) where there are many different nodes of decision making and they all overlap. There are very nuanced rules about how a certain resource can be used and how people can enter/exit that environment and these rules are built up over years, sometimes decades that are carefully calibrated to that institutional environment which helps to conserve the environmental resource at hand.

Elinor Ostrom’s work is a clear affirmation of the classical liberal argument. The classical liberals have been saying if you want prosperity, good governance, there should be as little as possible little central government. Sure governments can set a few general rules, as much as possible they shouldn’t play the game-master of the economy. Classical liberals say rules emerge bottom-up. That’s exactly what Elinor Ostrom is saying. If you leave people to their devices, people are smarter than you think. They don’t just consume the whole environmental resource and it just gets depleted. It doesn’t turn out how a rational choice (HE) theory model might predict. She’s a nuanced thinker, she’s also very academic. A lot of people are just not going to read the academic stuff because of how far away it is and how technical it is. Her work has big implications for environmental policy today and I don’t see it taking place in many quarters of environmental policy.

Taylor 58:30–59:00 00:30

Yea, I found reading her approach great because it’s a fresh perspective. Like you said, she cuts through the dichotomy. You see these people having these conversations like they don’t know she exists.

Donovan 59:00–59:10 00:10

It’s because in a lot of these conversations about government vs market, it tends to be very politically driven. The participants in that kind of argument are trying to prove that the other side is wrong. You just aren’t going to find much nuance in popular discourse.

Taylor 59:10–1:00:00 00:50

The decentralized theme has come up in my exploration. I’ve also read about decentralization itself as a subject. There is a book “The Spider and the Starfish” (Brafman, 2006) which is about decentralized organizations which contrasts the different organizational models. It’s from the perspective of the period in history where Al Qaeda and Napster were a new disruptive phenomenon and their decentralized structure was a unique feature that distinguished them from their contemporary alternatives. I think it’s something new that this decentralization theme might be a common ground where both sides share similar ideas about where they want to end up. I hear about the ideal coming from the left as well. I’m seeing it repeat from what I heard from you, and these are the themes that I see popping up. It’s nice to get to hear a fresh perspective.

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Rizzo, Mario J (NYU), 2017 Rationality What? Misconceptions of Neoclassical and Behavioral Economics
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2927443

Rodrik, Dani, 2006 Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion
https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/publications/goodbye-washington-consensus-hellowashington-confusion

Wikipedia, Solow-Swan model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solow%E2%80%93Swan_model