Heterodox
It seems to me that mainstream economists are socialized into ignorance and anti-scholarly norm. Plenty of economists exist that so many economists dismiss as 'fringe', and yet these dismissed economists excel on any scholarly criteria. It is not just that mainstream economists do not know of vast bodies of scholarship, produced by academics around the world. They also do not know that what they believe has long ago been shown to be without foundation. I have gone on like this before. I might as well list the sort scholarly criteria I have in mind. I am thinking of economists with doctorates from well-known universities, who have published numerous journal articles and books from academic presses. They have edited such books and garnered many citations. They have supervised doctorate
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It seems to me that mainstream economists are socialized into ignorance and anti-scholarly norm. Plenty of economists exist that so many economists dismiss as 'fringe', and yet these dismissed economists excel on any scholarly criteria. It is not just that mainstream economists do not know of vast bodies of scholarship, produced by academics around the world. They also do not know that what they believe has long ago been shown to be without foundation. I have gone on like this before.
I might as well list the sort scholarly criteria I have in mind. I am thinking of economists with doctorates from well-known universities, who have published numerous journal articles and books from academic presses. They have edited such books and garnered many citations. They have supervised doctorate dissertations, where their students go on to other universities to do the same. They have been visiting professors at universities around the world, and maybe have occupied a named chair. They have been head of their department or otherwise provided successful service in academic administration. They have founded or co-founded journals and have been on the board of editors of various journals. They have provided policy advice and received festschrifts from those who have built on their work. They have written textbooks.
I should provide a small list of examples of scholars who rank on multiple criteria like the above:
I could expand this list, but I figure I do not want to embarrass too many with such fulsome praise.
This state of affairs may have something to do with abolishing the history of economic thought and any study of methodology. I do not expect recent mainstream economists to have read Smith's Wealth, Marx's Capital, or Keynes' General Theory. Sraffa's PoCbMoC is simultaneously an epoch-making book and virtually unknown. Fred Lee's A History of Heterodox Economics Challenging the mainstream in the twentieth century documents purges of economics departments.
I think mainstream economics are socialized to believe some questionable claims, based on rumors. For example, Marx was discredited by the marginal revolution. They cannot be expected to know of work in mathematical economics during the 1970s and 1980s formalizing Marx and empirical work that built on it. They'll believe Keynes was shown to be wrong by stagflation in the 1970s. The phrase 'bastard Keynesianism' is unknown, as are earlier theories of stagflation. The Arrow-Debreu-McKenzie model of intertemporal equilibrium is simultaneously the foundation of price theory and no longer central to economics.
But perhaps my perception of the sociology of economics is all wrong.