"The deafening silence" of economics journals

Here is a Google translation of a French article that appears today at  http://www.snesup.fr/Presse-et-documentation?aid=5960&ptid=5 , Syndicat national de l’enseignement supérieur.

Economists deaf, dumb magazines?

If journals have little interest in the crisis, it is basically because the rating system encourages faculty members to focus on abstraction. 

Fall of 1931. Fall of the pound sterling – after months of procrastination on the settlement of problems of the Reichsbank – with consequences that we know! The crisis is immediate to top economic journals. In spring 1932, the Journal of Political Economy devotes all its articles to the “monetary issues of the present hour.” No such thing happened three years ago when the financial crisis exploded which does not end in “managing” the follow economic, monetary and social. Even today, the French journals of economics and management provide little insight into the crisis that continues among the upheavals of globalization.

The deafening silence of the journals of the crisis …

Much has been made ​​since the fall of 2008, the silence “deafening” economists on the subprime crisis but not stress enough how much the economics journals were impervious to this beautiful subject of analysis. As if it were accepted that these journals would no longer be the place special scientific debate on the economic problems of the moment. Economists have not been stunned by the crisis and its development – and there were! – Have used other media to circulate their first analysis, mainly the internet (blogs and sites dedicated to economic issues). The fact was not new. We knew for some time that the journals (in a good way) no longer attract as many seasoned economists, whatever their school (a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research has even shown in 2005 that most economists known or most famous laboratories such as MIT moving away from the most prestigious journals to disseminate their research results). But in the French case, this literature “parallel” did not develop after the crisis as well as abroad, or as fast with the exception of the site of François Morin opened in early 2009.

The silence of the vast majority of economists, of course, their reasons. Proponents of an axiomatic economics have no need or way to look at what is happening in the real economy. Representation of the world is abstract and virtually tamper-proof (their assumption of market efficiency has been ruined by the crisis but it is already returned, haunting a bit like a zombie). This blindness is not a fact “ivory tower” the high places of magical thinking are in the heart of institutions that are operating in this crisis, as the central bank or the Ministry of Finance. The axiomatic approach is a recipe for unstoppable argue policy without disclosing the interests it serves. Just refer to the debates on the euro for include: representation in terms of monetary zone, which is seeking optimality rejects useful in the dark power games of finance.

… which are the main reasons the method of teacher evaluation researchers

The crisis has fed the idea that it is urgent to make fundamental changes to the thinking of economists and first to get rid of the domination of the neoclassical paradigm and the neoliberal vision. But as explained very well by Edward Fullbrook, who initiated last May of a World Economic Association, which already has some 6,900 economists in the world, this involves changing the power structures of the profession of which he places both university departments that journals (1).

If today, in their articles, academic economists show a great indifference to the situation they have in front, one of the main reasons is ultimately to be found in the rules that govern their careers. An illustration unexpected has just been given by the paper entitled “Speak Up! “Stephan Bourcieu posted on his blog a few days ago and the comments which he led. According to the Director General of Burgundy School of Business, it is necessary to report two events “seemingly completely independent, yet not devoid of common”: the economic and financial crisis experienced by the major European economy and the recent publication of the new list of academic journals in economics management of the CNRS. It simply suggests that the teacher-researchers, concerned first with their evaluation, simply fail to contribute to public debate, but commentators are quick to accuse the system of evaluation which they are subjected.

“For academics, the CNU aggregation and juries consider only scientific publications. In schools, it’s almost worse since the iron law of rankings has led them to adopt the only criterion for evaluating teachers, “says Jean-Pierre Nioche. And one might also add that the current conversion to all-English will not facilitate communication with the public …

About these ads