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I would be very curious to know why this has happened to economists alone--out of all the liberal arts departments. Are sociologists, historians, and political

by enoch_r 10y ago

I would be very curious to know why this has happened to economists alone--out of all the liberal arts departments. Are sociologists, historians, and political scientists immune to these influences? Or have the multinationals just refrained from attempting to influence them? What explains the lack of "multinational capture" among non-economist academics?

erostrate 10y ago
Economics studies the production of wealth, which is more relevant to business? Also economics claim to have a strong predictive power? I don't know. There are also interesting differences in how economists view themselves compared to other humanities, see this (biased) paper: Fourcade et al, the Superiority of Economists http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.1.89 http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.1.89 Economics tend to be a more insular and hierarchical discipline, and views itself as non-normative.
edanm 10y ago
One possibility, which I believe to be correct, is that what the parent wrote above isn't true. Economists study a field in which many people both have a strong bias, and a strong belief they know what they're talking about. Not many people vigorously disagree with historians cause not many people care that much about history. With economics, they do care. Which means that when economists have theories that fly in the face of what people believe (like pretty much all of science), people get more annoyed.
- enoch_r 10y ago
  Yeah, I probably wasn't obvious enough--my point was that if your hypothesis is "big companies capture academic fields," then you would not predict a world where economics, and only economics, is captured by "big multinationals." (And why "multinationals" instead of, say, the many large and powerful companies that benefit from tariffs and other protectionist policies?) To me (like you), that suggests that GP is telling a just-so story about why we can ignore economists.
MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
Well, the other liberal arts departments don't portend to not be liberal arts departments. Economics sells itself as rigorous and predictive. And "multinational capture" has occurred in myriad actual scientific fields, for similar reasons (using the prestige of rigorous, academic work to convince governments to do things). There's also the matter of the "rational actor" theory of human behavior, the a priori assumption of classical economics. It describes a being which is basically non-existent among flesh and blood humans. But corporations can form themselves in the image of this mythical economically rational being. And so, if classical economics does objectively describes the world, corporations are the uber-mensches of such a world and poised to dominate it in perpetuity - a clear incentive to capture and control the field, lest dissident economists succeed in espousing a revision of their core assumptions.
- helpfile321 10y ago
  You are dismissing an entire field of study because of your own mistaken assumptions. This post is a good example of how it is much easier to accept a simple narrative - "Economics is entirely dependent on an absurd assumption!" - because it offers an illusion of understanding rather than engage with the messy reality.
- snrplfth 10y ago
  The "rational actor" is just a model, only applicable to limited situations, and acknowledged to be so. It's a specifiable model against which to test hypothoses. This rather shopworn critique - "humans aren't like idealized rational actors!" - is based on the implication that classical-type economists think that the model is fully congruent with reality. They don't! And furthermore, they wouldn't agree that "corporations" (hey, why not unincorporated entities too?) can form themselves in this way. They recognize the limitations of information, incomplete knowledge of preferences, and limited foresight and prediction - and these apply no less to groups of people as they do to individuals. If you tried to suggest in a classical-school economics environment that corporations can actually, in real life, form themselves into idealized rational actors, you'd probably give them gut-busting laughing fits.

by enoch_r 10y ago

erostrate 10y ago

Economics studies the production of wealth, which is more relevant to business? Also economics claim to have a strong predictive power? I don't know. There are also interesting differences in how economists view themselves compared to other humanities, see this (biased) paper: Fourcade et al, the Superiority of Economists http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.1.89 http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.1.89 Economics tend to be a more insular and hierarchical discipline, and views itself as non-normative.

edanm 10y ago

One possibility, which I believe to be correct, is that what the parent wrote above isn't true. Economists study a field in which many people both have a strong bias, and a strong belief they know what they're talking about. Not many people vigorously disagree with historians cause not many people care that much about history. With economics, they do care. Which means that when economists have theories that fly in the face of what people believe (like pretty much all of science), people get more annoyed.

enoch_r 10y ago
Yeah, I probably wasn't obvious enough--my point was that if your hypothesis is "big companies capture academic fields," then you would not predict a world where economics, and only economics, is captured by "big multinationals." (And why "multinationals" instead of, say, the many large and powerful companies that benefit from tariffs and other protectionist policies?) To me (like you), that suggests that GP is telling a just-so story about why we can ignore economists.

MaxfordAndSons 10y ago

Well, the other liberal arts departments don't portend to not be liberal arts departments. Economics sells itself as rigorous and predictive. And "multinational capture" has occurred in myriad actual scientific fields, for similar reasons (using the prestige of rigorous, academic work to convince governments to do things). There's also the matter of the "rational actor" theory of human behavior, the a priori assumption of classical economics. It describes a being which is basically non-existent among flesh and blood humans. But corporations can form themselves in the image of this mythical economically rational being. And so, if classical economics does objectively describes the world, corporations are the uber-mensches of such a world and poised to dominate it in perpetuity - a clear incentive to capture and control the field, lest dissident economists succeed in espousing a revision of their core assumptions.

helpfile321 10y ago
You are dismissing an entire field of study because of your own mistaken assumptions. This post is a good example of how it is much easier to accept a simple narrative - "Economics is entirely dependent on an absurd assumption!" - because it offers an illusion of understanding rather than engage with the messy reality.
snrplfth 10y ago
The "rational actor" is just a model, only applicable to limited situations, and acknowledged to be so. It's a specifiable model against which to test hypothoses. This rather shopworn critique - "humans aren't like idealized rational actors!" - is based on the implication that classical-type economists think that the model is fully congruent with reality. They don't! And furthermore, they wouldn't agree that "corporations" (hey, why not unincorporated entities too?) can form themselves in this way. They recognize the limitations of information, incomplete knowledge of preferences, and limited foresight and prediction - and these apply no less to groups of people as they do to individuals. If you tried to suggest in a classical-school economics environment that corporations can actually, in real life, form themselves into idealized rational actors, you'd probably give them gut-busting laughing fits.