Results of poll of German economists

From Germany we have received the following message.

You and the readers of RWER may be interested in the results of a recent poll among German economists.

One question in that poll was “To which of the major schools of thought do you feel closest?”

The answers were: 

Neoclassicism 43.4%

Monetarism 4.7%

Keynesianism 19.7%

Socialism/Marxism 0.3%

Others 31.9%

This means that if you equate neoclassical economics with mainstream economics, the no longer holds the majority. That result is all the more interesting because the poll was taken among members of the Verein für Socialpolitik, the major association of German economists, which is (was?) traditionally dominated by the neoclassical mainstream. Many heterodox economists never join this association.

A similar poll was also taken in 2006, and some of the changes are quite interesting. For example, only 9.6% now deny the proposition that fiscal policy can be an efficient means of stabilising the business cycle (this was 28.8% in 2006). Also, the evaluation of Keynes’ contribution to economics has dramatically improved. 65.8% now believe it was “very important” (compared to only 50.5% in 2006).

More results of the poll (in German) are published here:

http://www.ftd.de/wirtschaftswunder/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=2448&blogId=10

With kind regards,

TK