It seems you are overly focused on the Nobel prize. There are many pathways in economics (see below). Also, you are still not confronting the economic arguments given by liberals.
The US centred system of academic rewards in economics incentivises small targets and risk averse timid behaviour in academic economics.
Staff get appointed at corporatised universities on the basis that they had a high profile supervisor on the editorial board of ranked academic journals who will ensure ranked publications thinking it will thereby enhance the ranking of the department.
The other staff ‘get stuck’ with teaching along with legions of exploited casual staff.
The paywalls on academic publications and on data discourages wider economic and interdisciplinary investigations, as well as those with an actual policy focus.
Economic training gets narrower and narrower with the disappearance of economic history, HET, comparative economic systems etc.
The evaluation of whose interests are being served is missing. Etc.
A brilliant assessment - many people ask of me, how it is that so many China scholars disagree with me on how China is governed - I suspect the same principles apply in Western, specifially European and American universities - I'd be unlikely to get a place there and if I did, I'd be unlikely to get works approved by supervisors as my knowledge and experience are contrary to published works by "great scholars".
Some of us have 20 years of experience on the ground, visiting rural China, meeting with local Congress delegates and representatives, talking about how the system really works and others read papers which tell them consistently that it doesn't work.
Yours is the first article I've read which articulates this so well, despite being a very different field, the principles remain the same - outside of China and the Global South my points of view are unrecognised, or disregarded as naive, in China and with people who actually do know China, I'm regardeds as well-informed - isn't that strange!
On the surface, this seems like a good argument but it is actually very strange. The Nobel winners come from diverse origins (countries) and socioeconomic background - so it is certainly weird that the author is shifting the focus on where they went to school. I suspect this is a backdoor political campaign for the Nobel Prize to start rewarding or awarding status to unproven heterodox ideas in economics. Something I suspect the author strongly favours due to his economic ideology.
There were resistance from economists when John Nash, being a Mathematician, received the Nobel prize in Economics. And they decided to take Game Theory as a major method later on. This shows how economists have a tunnel vision and resistance towards different ideas.
Their core method has been Gaussian statistical methods for decades, even though pure sciences came up with better methods. They just refuse to think that "other methods can also show causal relations" and come up with different variations of the same regression methods. Hence, the worst places to go to if you want to learn economics would be econ schools. I would suggest going to pure mathematics programs and learning methods first, then studying econ as a post-grad degree to grasp the ideas as you already know how the math works out. Then you will avoid having the tunnel vision succesfully.
It seems you are overly focused on the Nobel prize. There are many pathways in economics (see below). Also, you are still not confronting the economic arguments given by liberals.
https://politicaleconomy101.substack.com/p/50-disciplines-of-political-economy
The US centred system of academic rewards in economics incentivises small targets and risk averse timid behaviour in academic economics.
Staff get appointed at corporatised universities on the basis that they had a high profile supervisor on the editorial board of ranked academic journals who will ensure ranked publications thinking it will thereby enhance the ranking of the department.
The other staff ‘get stuck’ with teaching along with legions of exploited casual staff.
The paywalls on academic publications and on data discourages wider economic and interdisciplinary investigations, as well as those with an actual policy focus.
Economic training gets narrower and narrower with the disappearance of economic history, HET, comparative economic systems etc.
The evaluation of whose interests are being served is missing. Etc.
BTW, I'm a big fan of yours on X too - thank you
A brilliant assessment - many people ask of me, how it is that so many China scholars disagree with me on how China is governed - I suspect the same principles apply in Western, specifially European and American universities - I'd be unlikely to get a place there and if I did, I'd be unlikely to get works approved by supervisors as my knowledge and experience are contrary to published works by "great scholars".
Some of us have 20 years of experience on the ground, visiting rural China, meeting with local Congress delegates and representatives, talking about how the system really works and others read papers which tell them consistently that it doesn't work.
Yours is the first article I've read which articulates this so well, despite being a very different field, the principles remain the same - outside of China and the Global South my points of view are unrecognised, or disregarded as naive, in China and with people who actually do know China, I'm regardeds as well-informed - isn't that strange!
Thanks for highlighting the issue. Economic departments outside the narrow elite universities should reward scholars who cite widely!
On the surface, this seems like a good argument but it is actually very strange. The Nobel winners come from diverse origins (countries) and socioeconomic background - so it is certainly weird that the author is shifting the focus on where they went to school. I suspect this is a backdoor political campaign for the Nobel Prize to start rewarding or awarding status to unproven heterodox ideas in economics. Something I suspect the author strongly favours due to his economic ideology.
There were resistance from economists when John Nash, being a Mathematician, received the Nobel prize in Economics. And they decided to take Game Theory as a major method later on. This shows how economists have a tunnel vision and resistance towards different ideas.
Their core method has been Gaussian statistical methods for decades, even though pure sciences came up with better methods. They just refuse to think that "other methods can also show causal relations" and come up with different variations of the same regression methods. Hence, the worst places to go to if you want to learn economics would be econ schools. I would suggest going to pure mathematics programs and learning methods first, then studying econ as a post-grad degree to grasp the ideas as you already know how the math works out. Then you will avoid having the tunnel vision succesfully.