{"id":41542,"date":"2019-02-12T12:15:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T02:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=41542"},"modified":"2019-02-12T12:15:33","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T02:15:33","slug":"the-brainwashing-of-economics-graduate-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=41542","title":{"rendered":"The brainwashing of economics graduate students"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tI was reminded this week of an interesting studies published in 1987 by Arjo Klamer and David Colander on the influences that go into the training of a professional economist. This study was repeated by Colander in 2005. The results are rather disturbing although obviously I am an ‘insider’ in the sense I went through the process in one way or another myself (although not in a US graduate program). They demonstrate how far removed graduate students are from learning or being interested in the real world. They compete among each other for ‘technical excellence’ in mathematics so they can solve tricky technical problems but do not think it is important to know anything much about the real world economy nor about the economics literature and history of the discipline that has gone before them. They adopt classic Groupthink characteristics as they are moulded (socialised, brainwashed, choose your own word) by their professors (who then feed them into their own networks for employment etc). There is little wonder the profession has very little to say that makes any sense about the real world. It is largely a disgrace.
\n<\/p>\n

Clearly, I have been through this mill myself. It was quite torrid though being a non-orthodox thinker getting through the process where homogenisation is largely expected and enforced (through grades if nothing else).<\/p>\n

In my case, I was good at mathematics and statistics and read widely so I found the orthodox material to be easy. This meant I could get top grades, given the technical nature of the mainstream material (especially in graduate studies), and still have plenty of time to read all manner of things in sociology, philosophy, history, political science etc.<\/p>\n

So I think I came out of it with my humanity somewhat intact.<\/p>\n

I was also from the ‘other side of the tracks’, whereas most of my class mates were from well-to-do backgrounds, mostly from private schools and higher income suburbs.<\/p>\n

So I already knew there was inequality and poverty and that unemployment ravaged households.<\/p>\n

The first study by Arjo Klamer and David Colander – The Making of an Economist<\/a> – was published in the economics journal Journal of Economic Perspectives<\/em> (Vol.1, No.2) in the northern Fall of 1987.<\/p>\n

The second study by David Colander – The Making of an Economist Redux<\/a> – was published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives<\/em> (Vol.19, No.1) in the northern Winter of 2005.<\/p>\n

Unlike most academic journals, “All issues of the Journal of Economic Perspectives (1987 – present) are now publicly accessible online at no charge, compliments of the American Economic Association.”<\/p>\n

In the earlier study, the authors were interested in:<\/p>\n

\n… the initiation process that turns students into professional economists.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think the term “initiation” is somewhat euphemistic.<\/p>\n

Two years earlier (1985), journalist Robert Kuttner had published an article – The Poverty of Economics<\/em> – in the February edition of the The Atlantic Monthly<\/em> that noted:<\/p>\n

\nDepartments of economics are graduating a generation of idiots savants, brilliant at esoteric mathematics yet innocent of actual economic life.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that is definitely being euphemistic.<\/p>\n

I have written about how economics programs at university level nurture sociopathological tendencies in the students.<\/p>\n

For example:<\/p>\n

1. Economics curriculum is needed to work against selfishness and for altruism<\/a> (September 19, 2018).<\/p>\n

2. Humans are intrinsically anti neo-liberal<\/a> (May 22, 2017).<\/p>\n

Arjo Klamer and David Colander thus set out to examine what goes on in ‘graduate schools’ of economics in order to understand why economists engage in public discourse in the way that they do.<\/p>\n

They compiled a database from a survey of “six top-ranking graduate economic programs-University of Chicago, Columbia University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Yale University”.<\/p>\n

They followed up with face-to-face interviews.<\/p>\n

Profile of students<\/h2>\n

1. “The typical graduate student in economics at these selected institutions is a 26-year-old, middle class, nonreligious white male who is involved in a long-term relationship” (18.9 per cent were female).<\/p>\n

2. “Most had attended highly competitive undergraduate colleges and came from relatively well-to-do families.”<\/p>\n

3. “the majority see themselves as predominantly liberal.”<\/p>\n

This sort of profile is similar to many graduate programs that I have been aware of.<\/p>\n

4. “In terms of future jobs, 53 percent were planning to pursue an academic career, 33 percent were planning to go into policy-related work, 17 percent into business, 8 percent into research institutes, and 2 percent into journalism.”<\/p>\n

5. Peer group pressure was strong and militated against taken jobs with lower wages or less status (such as in public policy work).<\/p>\n

Impact of program<\/h2>\n

1. “we can conclude that graduate economics education is succeeding in narrowing students’ interests.”<\/p>\n

2. “Another indication of the narrowing process is that students also felt that graduate school gave them little opportunity for interdisciplinary discussions.”<\/p>\n

The following Table (Table 3 in the article) showed the responses to the question: “Which characteristics will most likely place students on the fast track? Circle one.”<\/p>\n

The authors noted that:<\/p>\n

\nThat question provided some of the most dramatic results of our survey.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

As you can see:<\/p>\n

1. “Knowledge of the economy and knowledge of economic literature do not make an economist successful, according to graduate students”.<\/p>\n

2. “Forty-three percent believed that a knowledge of economic literature was unimportant while only 10 percent felt that it was very important. Sixty-eight percent believed that a thorough knowledge of the economy was unimportant …”<\/p>\n

In the interviews that followed, the students confirmed this result.<\/p>\n

The authors note:<\/p>\n

\nClearly these results raise significant questions about the nature of graduate school, what is being taught, and the socialization process that occurs.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The most important things governing perceptions of success were “Being smart in the sense of being good at problem-solving” and “Excellence in mathematics”.<\/p>\n

Which raises the question – what problems are being solved? Certainly not those that relate much to the real world.<\/p>\n

In fact, what mainstream economics has come down to at the graduate level is a cute game, which former IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard summarised in his August 2008 article – The State of Macro<\/a> as being an exercise in following:<\/p>\n

\n

\n… strict, haiku-like, rules … [the economics papers] … look very similar to each other in structure, and very different from the way they did thirty years ago …\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Graduate students are trained to follow these ‘haiku-like’ rules, that govern an economics paper’s chance of publication success.<\/p>\n

So if an article submission does not conform to this haiku-like structure it has a significantly diminished chance of publication.<\/p>\n

So we get a formulaic approach to publications in macroeconomics that goes something like this:<\/p>\n