The Mankiw walk-out and my reading list (by Francesc Trillas)

Robin Wells presents her point of view about the recent walk out by some students at a class by Gregory Mankiw in Harvard University. While suggesting that staging a walk out is perhaps not the ideal method to engage in a civilized discussion, she also acknowledges that the incident should be taken as a starting point of a debate on how we teach economics. She suggests that economics should be more modest, and more balanced in terms of acknowledging real market failures and inequalities. I don't have much to add to the debate, except to suggest a possible reading list that tries to be balanced (my reading list in the course on Public Economics in the Master in Economics and Business Administration in the Autonomous University of Barcelona):

WEEK 1: Stern, Nicholas (2009), Imperfections In The Economics Of Public Policy, Imperfections In Markets, And Climate Change, Journal of the European economic Association, 8(2-3): 253-288, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1542-4774.2010.tb00504.x/pdf

WEEK 2: Bowles, Samuel; Gintis, Herbert (2002), The Inheritance of Inequality, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16(3): 3-30. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/aea/jep/2002/00000016/00000003/art00001

WEEK 3: Andersen, Torben M., et al. (2007), The Nordic Model, Chapter 8, http://www.svrez.gov.si/fileadmin/svez.gov.si/pageuploads/docs/Strategija_razvoja_Slovenije/The_Nordic_Model.PDF

WEEK 4: The Economist (2011), The Future of the State, Special Report, March 19th 2011, http://www.economist.com/specialreports?page=2

WEEK 5: Ostrom, Elinor (2009), Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems, Nobel Prize Lecture. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2009/ostrom_lecture.pdf