Several Newsletters ago I mentioned a report( on...

Several Newsletters ago I mentioned a report on the development of heterodox economics in France and the role of centralized recruitment and citation metrics in this context (here is the original report). The report indicated that the recruitment of heterodox economists has significantly declined in the past few years for several reasons. One main factor is thereby the reliance on citation metrics, which exhibit a size bias when it comes to judging the „scientific quality“ of different fields of research.

In this context the French Association for Political Economy has launched a petition promoting both the general advancement of more diverse perspectives in economic research and teaching as well as the more specific demand to introduce a new section dedicated to „Institutions, Economy, Territory and Society“ at the French National University Council.

This demand was recently opposed in a letter issued by Jean Tirole, the most recent recipient of a well-known prize issued by the Bank of Sweden. In his letter Tirole not only reveals his ignorance regarding the nature and justification of this demand but also underlines his commitment to path-dependence in economic research. Specifically, Tirole suggests to recruit a Panel of „Prize of the Bank of Sweden-“ and „Clark Medal”-Winners, which represent the very elite of today’s mainstream economics, to judge the validity of claims made by dissenting economists. While this proposal surely does not lack humor, one could supply an equally entertaining counterproposal by asking some other discipline – say physics – to evaluate the merits of the critics’ claims. In that case, I am pretty confident they would come up with something like this ;-)

Best,
Jakob