I’m following up Henry’s post on the superiority or otherwise of economists, and Krugman’s piece, also bouncing off Fourcade et al, with a few observations of my own, that don’t amount to anything systematic. My perspective is a bit unusual, at least for the profession as it exists today. I didn’t go to graduate school, and I started out in an Australian civil service job in the low-status[^1] field of agricultural economics.
So, I have long experience as an outsider to the US-dominated global profession. But, largely due to one big piece of good luck early on (as well as the obligatory hard work and general ability), I’ve done pretty well and am now, in most respects, an insider, at least in the Australian context.
I’ve also followed an approach, strongly deprecated in US academia, of writing lots of papers on many different topics. That has exposed me to a lot of different subfields of economics, each with their own status hierarchy and criteria for what counts as good work.
My conclusion from this experience is that the obvious problems of academic macroeconomics aren’t unique to that field (in fact, as Krugman points out, the sharp divisions within the field make it unusually open in some ways). In many parts of economics, the status rankings and evaluation criteria are driven much more by internal and aesthetic factors than by empirical validity or policy relevance.
There’s a big arbitrary element to all this. If the seminal (sic) paper by the recognised smartest guy (sic) in the field formulated the core problem in a particular way, his (sic) grad students will learn and propagate that way of doing things, and will vigorously resist any alternative approach, even a purely technical reformulation. They have, after all, a lot invested in the idea that they have learned something valuable that no one else really understands.
If you want to see the mentality at first hand, and have a strong stomach, take a dive into the cesspool that is Economics Job Market Rumors. I should mention that my distaste for EJMR is fully reciprocated. The idea that an understanding of economics combined with attention to actual events is more useful than mastery of a highly specialised bag of tricks is totally antithetical to the ethos of the site (unsurprisingly, they hate Krugman even more than they hate me). In a less extreme form, that’s true of the econ profession in general, as the Fourcade et al piece shows.
[^1]: At least in the international profession, dominated by US norms and values. Until recently in Australia, a large proportion of policy-oriented economists got their start in this field, and policy work, in turn has a status it lacks in the US.
{ 42 comments }
gianni 12.09.14 at 7:13 pm
oh goodness, linking to EJMR – and here I thought this was a family friendly blog!
js. 12.09.14 at 7:41 pm
Umm, the top-trending thread on EJMR right now is… “Genuine female here, taking questions”! Wut!?
Sasha Clarkson 12.09.14 at 9:10 pm
” I started out in … the low-status1 field of agricultural economics.”
… like J K Galbraith (père) – that’s good company, even posthumously! :)
Steve Sailer 12.09.14 at 9:34 pm
“In many parts of economics, the status rankings and evaluation criteria are driven much more by internal and aesthetic factors than by empirical validity or policy relevance.”
But how different is that from, say, anthropology? (Granted, economists would hate to be compared to cultural anthropologists …)
So can’t the overwhelming difference between economists and their soft science rivals be summed up in one word: “money”?
AB 12.09.14 at 10:06 pm
On the socialisation of business school professors:
http://www.boston.com/food-dining/restaurants/2014/12/09/harvard-business-school-professor-goes-war-over-worth-chinese-food/KfMaEhab6uUY1COCnTbrXP/story.html?s_campaign=bcom%3Asocialflow%3Atwitter
In the sky 12.09.14 at 10:15 pm
Have you read what they’re saying about you, John? It’s not so bad. A quick search of “Quiggin” gives bad headlines but at least a few people seem reasonable, and there’s a lot of downvoting for the meaner comments: http://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/john-quiggin-again and http://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/john-quiggin-being-a-dick-again
Bruce Wilder 12.09.14 at 10:49 pm
During the course of the 400+ comments on the other thread, my darker side was thinking about how sanitized some of the discussion has been — at least up until this reference to EMJR. The talk of status rankings driven by “aesthetic factors” and Krugman’s curious assertion that “crude patronage” plays little part, and the frowning at a showing of a marginal home field advantage in the publication of articles in elite journals based at particular schools.
I was thinking of the Microsoft antitrust case from 15 years ago, as a case study that revealed the poor quality of economic reasoning in what was my field of Industrial Organization economics. Microsoft was represented by Richard Schmanlensee, the Dean of the MIT business school; the government, I think, used Franklin M Fisher, among others. The quality of Schmanlensee’s testimony was just appalling — and he was rebuked rather sharply by the Judge in the case. Cross-examination revealed that Schmanlensee was being paid $100,000 to $200,000 a year by Microsoft — crude patronage, indeed.
Back in my day, if you turned over a rock in IO, you wouldn’t hear quiet griping about Cambridge or Chicago or whomever favoring its own in prestige publications — you’d hear outraged rumors of editors or “anonymous” reviewers front-running, to secure priority claims for their own research,, delaying publication approvals while more favored authors were allowed to improve their papers.
Much of this talk of steep hierarchies seems almost flattering to economists, and I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be.
notsneaky 12.09.14 at 11:03 pm
One quick comment on arrogance in economics. There is arrogance of economists towards non-economists, and there is arrogance of economists towards each other, via the hierarchy.
My sense of the latter is that most of it comes from econ grad students and new/very junior faculty (to be a bit obnoxious, these are Stiglitz’s “third rate students at first rate universities”). You can see it in the seminars and conferences, where these tend to be the folks who try and tear down others’ work – if the “other” is a “lower ranked monkey”, and kiss a lot of butt – if the “other” is a “higher ranked monkey”. You see it also in referee reports you get from journal submissions. You basically dread the idea that your paper will be handed off to some grad student or junior fellah with a chip on their shoulder. They will not read your paper. The parts they will read they will not understand. They will complain that “your method is not how it’s done in the literature” even when the whole point is to improve on “how it’s done in the literature”. They will think they’ve found some math error when usually they’ve just… failed to read the paper. They will complain that your paper is not in the latest version of LaTex, god forbid you submit it in Word! (on EJMR some of the commentators claim – and of course you got to take it with a big grain of salt – that as referees they automatically reject any paper which is not in LaTex). And they will question why you haven’t cited the work of their mentor, however irrelevant it is.
These are basically the folks who tend to populate EJMR. I haven’t experienced that with the senior people, especially not with the “famous” guys. I had some guy come up to me after a presentation and engage in lengthy and constructive discussion and only later did I realize that this was Kocherlakota. I’ve written emails, with inquiries and questions to several famous peoples, Krugman included (granted this was back in 2002 or so), and got courteous and considerate replies (I know people who had same experience with Friedman back in the day). I’ve met a number of superstars and nobelists and they’ve all been anything but arrogant, even indulgent (it’s possible there may have been some selection going on here). I’m sure, and this may be a paper I write someday where I test this hypothesis, that lack/end of double blind review at top journals has contributed to this problem.
All of which suggests that this to some extent is a development that occurred in the last ten, fifteen years or so. Or maybe the senior people were that way when they were young too.
Ronan(rf) 12.09.14 at 11:22 pm
There are worse things in the world than getting publicly called out as a mediocrity by Joe Stiglitz. In fact, I can see great value to it.
david 12.10.14 at 12:30 am
Off topic, no to derail another 400 comments, but holy crap that link at 5 is crazy. Fantastic restaurant though, and a solid order from Edelman.
On topic, would be interesting to know why ag econ and policy got the special link.
MPAVictoria 12.10.14 at 1:38 am
“Off topic, no to derail another 400 comments, but holy crap that link at 5 is crazy. Fantastic restaurant though, and a solid order from Edelman.”
Man you are not kidding! Crazy. I wouldn’t trust that man to balance my check book let alone take public policy advice from him.
Sam 12.10.14 at 7:49 am
Theodore Schultz, who won the Nobel prize in Economics with Lewis in 1979, got his PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Luis Enrique 12.10.14 at 9:22 am
if there is one thing that units economists, it is revulsion at EJMR.
Luis Enrique 12.10.14 at 9:23 am
duh. unites.
Zamfir 12.10.14 at 9:28 am
As InTheSky notes, these are quite some reasonable voices among the general nastiness. There are some threads about Fourcade, with pretty OK discussion in them.
Neil 12.10.14 at 10:38 am
EJMR seems to be the economics equivalent of the philosophy metametablog (no link; google it if you want). Do other disciplines have equivalents? Or is something peculiar about philosophy and economics that leads to the development of sites where jerks can engage in this kind of adolescent stupidity?
Peter T 12.10.14 at 11:06 am
I am surprised by Steve Sailer’s question @4: “But how different is that from, say, anthropology? (Granted, economists would hate to be compared to cultural anthropologists …)”.
Anthropology usually starts with years of detailed field work, trying to describe what is going on culturally in some small part of the human universe. That’s where you make your name. Sometimes a village in Africa, sometimes a slum in Brazil, sometimes a middle-class community in the US. Sure there is plenty of theorising, but it draws on and references all that detail. Note that Claude Levi-Strauss was criticised for not being “able to converse easily with any of his native informants in their native language, which is uncharacteristic of anthropological research methods of participatory interaction with subjects to gain a full understanding of a culture.”. Bit of a contrast with economics.
T 12.10.14 at 2:40 pm
@7
The stakes are way way higher than you understand. They’re in the millions and tens of millions. For example, consider this: http://masslawyersweekly.com/fulltext-opinions/2008/10/06/1229708-national-economic-research-associates-inc-et-al-v-evans-et-al/
T 12.10.14 at 3:08 pm
@8
There is very little mobility in academic econ. Great placements tend to be lateral and almost all placements are downward. There is very little upward mobility as some prominent exceptions. This seems very different from other social sciences. Am I correct on the latter observation? Clearly goes to the socialization and culture of the profession.
The Dark Avenger 12.10.14 at 3:34 pm
Not only that, Peter, there is a book written specifically for anthropologists out in the field, called, How to Learn an Unwritten Language. Of course, with almost everything not a dedicated kitchen appliance having the ability to record sound/video, it’s a lot easier to use them to learn a language that has no written documentation.
Barkley Rosser 12.10.14 at 10:26 pm
John,
As someone who is also not infrequently on the receiving end of flaming on ejmr, I sympathize, alhtough I have not posted on Econospeak about how rotten ejmr is, given that I figure most people know. I would make two points.
The first is obvious and trivial: anonymity allows for the worst to come out. Thus we see frustrated people asserting themselves in the most egregiou ways that they would never (or rarely) do in public or with their names attached, including horrific manifestations of extreme prejudices regarding race, gender, nationality, sexual identity, religion, and others, quite aside from the expected rantings about schools of economic thought and the even more hilariously trivial rants over such matters as LaTEx versus Word.
However, the other point is that for all its sins, one does see people arguing back against the worst of these trolls and ranters. Not all is totally lost in that ignominious cesspool… :-).
Tyrone Slothrop 12.11.14 at 1:48 am
Edelman has since apologized for his behaviour towards Sichuan Garden and its menu pricing discrepancies.
Ronan(rf) 12.11.14 at 1:55 am
I have to say I sympathise with Edelman. I once got into a four month feud with an employer (still unresolved, or more accurately resolved in their favour by default) over between £7-22. It was incredibly annoying, and very difficult to extricate myself from. I spent considerably more on tube fares than I was up for grabs.
Ronan(rf) 12.11.14 at 2:19 am
..there has been a twist in the Ben Edelman story. All major twitter feeds should be covering it.
gianni 12.11.14 at 2:26 am
story has already jumped the shark. started as a bit of good fun, but very little is to be gained by siccing the internet mobs on someone
MPAVictoria 12.11.14 at 3:15 am
“I once got into a four month feud with an employer ”
Key difference I think….
Steve Sailer 12.11.14 at 8:33 am
Peter T points out:
“Anthropology usually starts with years of detailed field work,”
Right. Economists seldom do years of fieldwork in for-profit corporations to see how they actually perceive incentives and behave.
For example, while majoring in economics in the late 1970s, I was taught that the old worries about businesses trying to get monopoly advantages were out of date, so why bother enforcing the Sherman anti-trust act. But when I became VP of strategy for a market research firm, it was apparent that getting monopoly advantage was central to making the stock price go up.
Barry 12.11.14 at 4:49 pm
(I hate to agree with Steve, but)
“Right. Economists seldom do years of fieldwork in for-profit corporations to see how they actually perceive incentives and behave.”
I’ve heard that economists are the most likely of the social sciences to rely on secondary sources.
“For example, while majoring in economics in the late 1970s, I was taught that the old worries about businesses trying to get monopoly advantages were out of date, so why bother enforcing the Sherman anti-trust act. But when I became VP of strategy for a market research firm, it was apparent that getting monopoly advantage was central to making the stock price go up.”
I don’t think that it’s coincidental that this time was during a push by the Chicago school (don’t know about Harvard) to nullify the Sherman act, which IMHO they succeeded in doing through the courts. Perhaps the most clear-cut case of social scientists using non-democratic means to destroy laws and to conduct social engineering, but they certainly won’t admit that.
tgrtgr gbfbfbg 12.11.14 at 6:46 pm
Not every field should specialize in every methodology. Large scale data and now experimental methodologies are the economists’ forte. Anthropologists/Sociologists have a real advantage in case study methodology and that evidence should be widely read in economics. There should be a lot more economic history, Nature’s Metropolis taught me a lot about how commodities get to be commodities and should be required reading. Also, lots about distance and space in economics.
The study of production and consumption should be a big topic across the social sciences, with different disciplines building methodologies that suit the questions they ask.
But, I’d say that if you think Economists completely reject the small scale evidence you haven’t been paying attention to the experimental research. John Lott and his followers are very into domain specific knowledge and field experiments.
John Quiggin 12.11.14 at 7:11 pm
@29 I’m pretty sure you mean John List, who is a big name in field experiments. AFAIK, John Lott has no remaining followers, except for his devoted fan, Mary Rosh
Robert 12.11.14 at 8:34 pm
John, can you expand on this: ” I didn’t go to graduate school”? Did you get a PhD? Based on independent research or what?
Eric Titus 12.11.14 at 9:59 pm
I find it strange that whole swathes of “economic” topics are better covered by other disciplines. I’m thinking here of things like subcontracting/low-wage work, social networks and the hiring process, and anything related to gender. Somehow, the tools of economics have not developed to incorporate non-monetary factors–facets like employer provision of benefits can only be understood to the extent that they can be given a dollar value. Even finance–which is all about valuation–can’t really be understood without some social/psychological components.
My impression from my occasional interactions is that economists know little about research in other disciplines–and even if they read it might take years to develop the capacity to understand it. I even saw a situation where an economist acted dismissively towards a statistical model from another field because it didn’t have the name they were used to from economics!
john c. halasz 12.11.14 at 10:20 pm
Robert @ 31:
It’s called google:
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/CV.html
(Whatever else might be said, that really is a hugely impressive number of publications).
Steve Sailer 12.12.14 at 2:17 am
Barry says:
“Perhaps the most clear-cut case of social scientists using non-democratic means to destroy laws and to conduct social engineering, but they certainly won’t admit that.”
Right. But apathy about anti-trust enforcement has spread across the political spectrum. For example, Piketty’s “Capital in the 20th Century” pooh-poohs concerns about Carlos Slim having a telecom monopoly in Mexico:
http://takimag.com/article/better_a_crook_than_a_wasp_the_left_ditches_progressivism_steve_sailer/print#axzz3Le6gf31O
John Quiggin 12.12.14 at 11:41 am
Robert @31 My PhD was done by external study, from the University of New England (in Armidale, Australia).
John Quiggin 12.12.14 at 6:22 pm
@jch Thanks!
Barry 12.12.14 at 6:30 pm
Steve Sailer: “Right. But apathy about anti-trust enforcement has spread across the political spectrum. For example, Piketty’s “Capital in the 20th Century†pooh-poohs concerns about Carlos Slim having a telecom monopoly in Mexico:”
You have succeeded in an intellectual project, so to speak, when the other side unconsciously uses your own paradigm.
tgrtgr gbfbfbg 12.12.14 at 8:15 pm
oops., yes thats List, don’t know how I got that mixed up.
tgrtgr gbfbfbg 12.12.14 at 8:22 pm
The labor literature on Gender is huge and sophisticated. Nobody else does that better, though certainly a lot of other disciplines have interesting things to say. It seems to me that people haven’t read papers by, say, Stevenson or Goldin.
Blissex 12.14.14 at 5:48 pm
Some of my usual quotes on why economists, at least those sponsored by deep pockets, make so much money:
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/charles-ferguson-mit-brunel-lecture-on.html
«It is one thing to be honestly correct or not correct about something; it’s another thing for an academic discipline to have a systemic corruption problem. And that’s what I will be talking about in part later, because the economics discipline in my view does have that problem.»
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/29/inside_job_director_charles_ferguson_wall
«And the same interest groups, companies, industries, that began contributing to political campaigns and building up lobbying organizations and engaging in revolving-door hiring in the political sphere also began doing the same thing in American academia, to the point that now there is actually an industry, an industry that’s probably a couple of billion dollars a year, of selling academic expertise for people who have public policy or legal or law enforcement problems.»
http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_47/b3656050.htm
«But to put it bluntly, the entire situation smells very, very bad. Enormous conflicts of interest among former government officials and/or economists, particularly those who specialize in regulation or antitrust policy, are now the rule rather than the exception. In addition, many of these economists violate their own university regulations by spending more time consulting than doing academic work, by not fully disclosing their consulting relationships, and by publishing research favorable to their clients without stating that they consult for the industries discussed in their publications.
Now, given this situation, suppose you’re a graduate student in economics or management, writing a Ph.D. thesis on telecommunications policy. Choice A: attack the clients and publications of all the senior professors supervising your work, and who are critical to your career. Choice B: make lots of money working for them, and then continue in their footsteps. Perhaps unsurprisingly, very few seem to opt for choice A. A number of prominent economists are privately very disturbed by this situation, but they are outnumbered and few dare to comment publicly about it. University administrators seem to be remarkably timid about reining in this problem.»
http://www.capitalismwithoutfailure.com/2012/10/charles-ferguson-standing-behind-every.html
«Well, actually, now that Columbia had adopted disclosure regulations, we now know at least something about Hubbard’s income sources, and the overwhelming majority of them are in the financial sector. The HTML version his CV (which you can read here) does not fully disclose his activities, but if you click on the PDF version, you see more. And what you see is that at least two thirds of his literally dozens of consulting, advisory, and directorship arrangements over the last decade are with the financial sector — MetLife, KKR, Goldman Sachs, Freddie Mac, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, the list goes on and on.»
http://rwer.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/doctor-x-pure-shit-and-the-royal-societys-motto/
«I found myself sitting next to a very likable young middle-aged academic tenured at an elite British university, whom henceforth I will refer to as Doctor X and whose field is closely associated with this blog.»
«Every year I publish papers in the top journals and they’re pure shit.†Doctor X, who by now had had a glass or two, felt bad about this, not least because “students these days are so idealistic and eager to learn; they’re really wonderful.†Furthermore Doctor X could and would like “to write serious papers but what would be the point?â€Â»
«The amount of funding Doctor X’s department receives depends not on how many papers or their quality its members publish, but instead on in which journals they are published. The journals in Doctor X’s field in which publication results in substantial funding will not publish “serious papers†but instead only “pure shit†papers, meaning ones that merely elaborate old theories that nearly everyone knows are false. Moreover, even to publish a “serious paper†in addition to the “pure shit†ones could taint the department’s reputation, resulting in a reduction of its funding. In any case, no one at a top university would read a “serious paper†because they only read “top journals.â€Â»
Plus I remember that Ken Lay of Enron fame had endowed 35 (*thirty five*) professorial chairs in various universities, some in international economics, some in *accounting* :-).
Dan Nexon 12.14.14 at 8:22 pm
“Anthropologists/Sociologists have a real advantage in case study methodology and that evidence should be widely read in economics.”
I love the parochial view of sociology expressed in sentences like this.
Robert 12.14.14 at 8:49 pm
Thanks for the response, John. I’ve only tried to read a couple of your papers, as well as your Halloween book.
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