Henry Farrell — Economists aren’t ‘superior’ just because

Marion Fourcade, Etienne Ollion and Yann Algan’s forthcoming piece on the ‘superiority of economists’ is a lovely, albeit quietly snarky, take on the hidden structures of the economics profession. It provides good evidence that e.g. economics hiring practices, rather than being market driven are more like an intensely hierarchical kinship structure, that the profession is ridden with irrational rituals, and that key economic journals are apparently rather clubbier than one might have expected in a free and competitive market (the University of Chicago’s Quarterly Journal of Economics gives nearly 10% of its pages to University of Chicago affiliated scholars; perhaps its editors believe that this situation of apparent collusion will be naturally corrected by market forces over time). What appears to economists as an intense meritocracy (as Paul Krugman acknowledges in a nice self-reflective piece) is plausibly also, or alternately, a social construct built on self-perpetuating power relations. 

Unsurprisingly, a lot of economists are reading the piece (we’re all monkeys, fascinated with our reflections in the mirror). Equally unsurprisingly, many of them (including some very smart ones) don’t really get Fourcade et al’s argument, which is a Bourdieuian one about how a field, and relations of authority and power within and around that field get constructed.…

Since economists don't acknowledge power relationships they assume their superiority is a natural result of superiority that gets reflected in their position in a meritocracy and demonstrated economically through just deserts in accordance with the laws of supply and demand and marginal productivity in a competitive environment. :)

Crooked Timber
Economists aren’t ‘superior’ just because

Henry Farrell | Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University