The Chutzpah of The Economics Profession

New discussion paper by Marion Fourcade, Etienne Ollion, and Yann Algan

From the abstract

In this essay, we investigate the dominant position of economics within the network of the social sciences in the United States. We begin by documenting the relative insularity of economics, using bibliometric data. Next we analyze the tight management of the field from the top down, which gives economics its characteristic hierarchical structure. Economists also distinguish themselves from other social scientists through their much better material situation (many teach in business schools, have external consulting activities), their more individualist worldviews, and in the confidence they have in their discipline’s ability to fix the world’s problems. Taken together, these traits constitute what we call the superiority of economists, where economists’ objective supremacy is intimately linked with their subjective sense of authority and entitlement. While this superiority has certainly fueled economists’ practical involvement and their considerable influence over the economy, it has also exposed them more to conflicts of interests, political critique, even derision.

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And for an excellent piece on the imperialism of mainstream economics in the social sciences, see this paper by Ben Fine (subscription required).

Ben Fine on the Material Culture of Financialisation

A FESSUD Working paper by Ben Fine.

From the abstract:

The purpose of this paper is threefold. First is to comment upon the nature of financialisation. Second is to frame how this leads financialisation to be understood whether consciously or otherwise. And, third, is to draw out implications for surveying households as their experiences and understandings of, and reactions to, financialisation without specifically designing a questionnaire itself for this purpose. As should already be apparent, underpinning this contribution is the presumption that financialisation is a characteristic of contemporary capitalism (and that the term is also an appropriate category for representing this characteristic). The material culture of financialisation is addressed by drawing upon the 10 Cs approach that was developed for the study of consumption, highlighting how it is Constructed, Construed, Commodified, Conforming, Contextual, Contradictory, Closed, Contested, Collective, and Chaotic.

Read rest here.

Ben Fine on British Coal Industry's Contribution To Work of Paul Sweezy

My research has delved me into the plethora of work produced by the 'Monthly Review School'. Interestingly enough, I came across this article by Ben Fine, which I found to be quite illuminating. 

From the abstract:

Paul Sweezy has been a central figure in the understanding and development of Marxist political economy both in the United States and more widely in the West. For a long period, much like his counterparts in the United Kingdom, Maurice Dobb and Ronald Meek, his was almost a lone voice along with his close collaborators, most notably Paul Baran. Much has changed in the last twenty years with the renewed intellectual interest in Marxism following the student activisim of the sixties-so much that Marxism has even attained the status of academic respectability. This has meant that whilst there was always opposition to the Sweezy problematic (as represented by the “Monopoly Capital” or Monthly Review school), only in recent years has it been substantially criticised and counterbalanced by alternative schools of Marxism. In particular, there has been a lessening sympathy for underconsumptionist theory; for the notion that monopoly and competition are inversely related; for the validity of the concept of the potential surplus and its compatibility with value theory; and, as a more general aspect of the latter, that monopoly and competition and accumulation can be analyzed independently of the labour (value-producing) process, whatever the merits of Braverman’s (1974) seminal contribution. In addition, unfortunately on the margins of political economy, rather than its occupying a central position of debate as within the often supposedly separated discipline of economic history, Sweezy has been a prime mover in the debate on the transition from feudalism to capitalism’ which has subsequently given way to the “Brenner Debate” [...] The purpose of this article could hardly be to provide a “political economy of Sweezy.” For this, the present author cannot claim adequate acquaintance with Sweezy ’s intellectual and political biography. Indeed, here we rely exclusively upon the articles of Sweezy that have appeared in the academic journals. As a study of the evolution of Sweezy’s political economy, we have made use then of only a few of the pieces of the jigsaw that make up his intellectual biography, although we also have available some overall picture of the “final product,” as represented in his mature works.

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