A socioligist interviewsAmerican Economists:"ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERT AUTHORITY IN AMERICAN ECONOMICS" by MIKE REAY.
ABSTRACT: "Connection to academic knowledge is a defining feature of modern expertise, and it is often treated as the key to maintaining professional authority. It is unclear however just where and when it has to be made, and how it might fail. Interviews with economists working in a variety of different settings in the United States suggest that most of their academic knowledge is too abstract to be of much substantive use, and their academic standards of scientific rigor may play only a minor role in legitimizing their day-to-day authority. This does not threaten their status however, because economists have become entrenched in a variety of organizational settings as possessors of a craft-like ‘core’ of valuable skills. The momentum of this basic institutionalization suggests that while connection to elite academic knowledge is a defining characteristic of modern expertise, it may not always be central to explaining ongoing expert authority."
A socioligist describes the Transnationalization of Economics:"The Construction of a Global Profession:The Transnationalization of Economics" by Marion Fourcade.
Abstract:
This article relies on an analysis of the institutionalization of economics worldwide during the 20th century to argue that the logic of professional development in this particular field has come to be increasingly defined in global terms. Connections to (mainly) U.S.-based standards of work and professional practice are routinely used in the local competition whereby different professional segments and groups seek to assert their authority on particular jurisdictions (scientific, corporate, or political). In this process of professional construction (or reconstruction), economies are being transformed through complex transnational mechanisms which, ultimately, feed back into the identity and jurisdictional claims of the economics
profession itself, both in the “core” and in the “periphery.”
Excerpt:
"The strength of Marx’s picture is that it brings to light the dual character of the capitalist developmental logic—the intensification of exploitation through both technological upheaval (the vertical or temporal dimension) and worldwide expansion (the horizontal or geographical dimension). Just like the capitalist production process, economic ideas and
technologies are never fixed—they work continuously at their own revolution. And just like capitalism, they strive for international diffusion. Professionals—private consultants, public technocrats, and scientific experts, many of whom are trained economists—constitute the main vehicles of these transformations."
Dani Rodrik stimulates candid conversations at the core according to Steve Waldman:
“Dani Rodrik's wonderful post on free trade and prices has started an extraordinarily candid conversation among economists. Economists sometimes rudely pretend that critics of free trade simply fail to understand "Ricardo's Difficult Idea", and that skepticism amounts either to ignorance, a kind of literary snobbishness, or simple corruption. In doing so, despite protestations to the contrary and rich nuances hidden in journals, economists as a group have grown doctrinaire in policy arguments regarding trade. All of a sudden, thanks to Dani Rodrik, they've begun to fess up.” And many links to the conversations in the post.
Dani Rodrik's attempted summary.
Fun with economics from Alex Leijonhufvud and
Alan Blinder( the second article needs subscription or Jestor access).
