The Evening Standard's City Spy column has dutifully relayed the 10 Downing St press office coordinated response to the letter 52 economists sent to the Observer at the weekend asking for a Plan B.
They have said:
Much excitement that "52 economists" have written to The Observer saying that the Government debt reduction strategy is too severe. But the Adam Smith Institute claims that "only 15 of the 52 are actually practising mainstream economists".
The remainder have an axe to grind (for instance Andrew Watt "senior researcher, European Trade Union Institute" and Richard Murphy "anti-poverty campaigner") or work for Left-wing groups like the New Economics Foundation, or are retired, or working overseas, or don't teach economics but other subjects such as "organisational studies", "gender studies" or "social policy". Most damningly, the Adam Smith Institute adds, of Mark Fisher, Stewart Lansley and Olivier Ratle that they "hardly register on Google at all".
So, economists can only work for banks, and not trade unions.
And economists can promote profit but not fight poverty.
And economists cease to be when they retire.
Or never are if they're left wing.
And fall off the edge at Dover.
Whilst Google is now the determinant of eligibility.
All very odd, especially as the Standard have been in contact with me this morning asking for a comment, as they often do, on an economic issue.
Strange that.
Or just, maybe, the Adam Smith Institute got it wrong? I think that the most likely explanation.
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Whenever someone writes a letter in support of the coalition you are always quick to point out that it was written by “neoliberals” and all the other tags you come out with. The Evening Standard are just doing the same, in reverse. Why can’t they?
Because I play the idea
They’re playing the people
As things stand in UK academia at the moment, an academic is much more likely to be working on issues actually relating to economic policy (rather than abstract theoretical or econometric issues) if they are in a department like Social Policy, Sociology, Political Economy and Accountancy than if they are in an Economics department.
Huge swathes of modern research in mainstream neoclassical economics (which is over 95% of the economic research that is going on in the UK today) are utterly irrelevant to economic concepts which might interest ordinary people (for example, why the great crash of 2008-09 happened, and what the consequences are). This is true of both microeconomics and macroeconomics.
Hence, there’s a very good reason why most of the signatories of Plan B weren’t employed in university economics departments. The only way they could do interesting work was NOT to be employed in those departments but instead to be employed in related subjects which analyse aspects of economic phenomena which people in the real world might be interested in.
There are some very honourable exceptions to this rule. For example, Professor Tony Atkinson (who was another signatory to the letter) managed the incredible feat of working within mainstream economics his entire career while still producing interesting work relevant to ordinary people. But only a few people have managed to do that in the last 30 years – and for people going into academia now, it would be much harder to do that.
So in fact, the fact that most of the signatories to Plan B weren’t practising economists actually says a lot about the dire state of mainstream academic economics in Britain today. And ASI are completely clueless about this, as one might expect.
(p.s. I should disclose that I was also one of the signatories to the Plan B letter)
Thanks Howard
I agree
And happy to be your co-signatory!
The letter by the ‘economists’ is one thing – the manner of the response by the ASI is a poor show. Perhaps the real target was Keynes?
In the long-run, we are all…retired?
According to Andrew Neil one of the signatories is a Media Studies Lecturer at a Glasgow university. True, or not?
Sure he is
http://www.gcu.ac.uk/cbs/departments/culturalbusiness/meetthestaff/drdchalmers/
But that’s because he’s an applied economist – you know – the sort who know what happens in the real world – and as Howard Reed has pointed out – they get short shrift these days in economic depts
Fair enough. Personally I’m not into these signed letters sent by “experts” to newspapers – from either side – they normally just represent narrow interest groups, and often the people who sign it aren’t experts. This was certainly the case in the national insurance debate at the last election, a handful of rich businessmen were able to cloud the debate for a couple of weeks by sending a letter to a national newspaper.
The Evening Standard always dutifully relays Tory spin.
Today’s City Spy goads David Blanchflower for predicting that unemployment would hit 20% due to Osborne’s cuts, when unemployment is only 7%.
It doesn’t mention that Osborne’s cuts haven’t kicked in yet, and more importantly, that Blanchflower never actually said that. What he said was that at the height of the financial crisis unemployment could have reached 20% but this was avoided by increases in spending – the programme of cuts slows down the recovery, which was moving quickly away from the height of the crisis.
That is absolutely not the same as ‘predicting unemployment will hit 20%’!