The Latvian authorities aren’t capable to go beyond the Neoclassical common sense dungeon. They don’t have a sufficiently plural education. They are physicians, engineers, mathematicians with courses of specialization in business or marketing, with some small classes about macroeconomics, posing as economists. The few with a master and/or doctoral degree specifically in economics had studied mainly neoclassical synthesis, making them hydraulic pseudo-economists. They didn’t have a pluralistic education in economics, they didn’t learn economic theory, they didn’t study profoundly (if indeed, have studied at all) Smith, Ricardo, Schumpeter, Keynes. The authors about economic development are forbidden. (..) They didn’t develop the ability to think independently. They are the result of ideologically hermetically closed theoretical environments, where there’s no dialogue. (..) While people go on believing that models, as a dogmatic expression of reality, are more important than reality itself, Latvia won’t develop.

— Jānis Bērziņš, Economic dogmas and development