This could be a golden age for economics. Recent advances in theory, economic history and quantitative methods have provided tools to address pressing issues of inequality of opportunity, financial instability and climate change. At airport bookshops, Freakonomics, Why Nations Fail and Irrational Exuberance compete with John Grisham’s latest. Students flock to introductory courses.

So why are economists in the doghouse? Everyone now knows that we missed the boat in 2008. Trends in house prices and indebtedness were in the data but we did not pay attention to them. Nor did we later provide convincing explanations of what went wrong. Some economists advocated policies that contributed to the onset of crisis and exacerbated the resulting unemployment and economic insecurity. These failures may be traced to complacency among economists that a largely unregulated market economy would take care of itself.

But there is another reason for discontent with the discipline. Our students are among those flipping the pages of economics bestsellers and wanting to get involved in policy debates. They are not happy with what they are getting in class. They are embarrassed when they are no more able to explain the eurozone crisis or persistent unemployment than their fellow students in engineering or archaeology.