I've just read a column by Paul Krugman on whether the US has full employment, or not. I think he's called the issue wrong by saying it has, but that's not my reason for noting the column he wrote. I am instead drawing attention to what he has said on the state of academic discourse on this and other issues, by saying:
An aside: the way this discussion is taking place marks a kind of new frontier in the mechanics of scientific communication — and, I think, an unfortunate one. Once upon a time economic debate took place in the pages of refereed journals, but that stopped being true at least 30 years ago, with working papers becoming the principal means of communication. Even that turned out to be too slow in the face of rapid change; so during the crisis years, say from 2008-2013, a lot of discussion and debate moved to blogs, which I'd say worked very well. In retrospect, the debates we all had over leverage, monetary policy, fiscal policy and more were really classic — the 21st-century equivalent of, say, Keynes vs. Ohlin on trade balances and relative prices.
But this latest debate has taken place largely through dueling Twitter threads — which is, I'd say, awful. The economists involved are very smart, and the threads very informative; but for people trying to keep track, including students, this is really a mess. If you want an entry point, you might try this tweet by Nick Bunker. But guys, we really need something like, you know, articles — blog posts would do the trick – that summarize your positions.
I add the emphasis for a reason. It's because he is right: refereed academic journals are really not where academic debate now is. It can take two or more years to get a paper out in such a journal. To get published you have to concentrate on a single, usually minute, point of contention. And then you have to make it seem as if this single issue is really important and in itself in need of resolution, even if that means ignoring the whole bigger picture of what really matters.
But academics have to write such contrived pieces. I'm learning the game. I am not wholly sure it is a useful one. Certainly, as a means for advancing understanding in social science I doubt its efficacy, especially when the considerable cost of academic time dedicatecd to such work because of the arcane way in which acadmeic achievement is apparised is taken into account.
In 2005 when considering how to create the tax justice movement John Christensen and I both realised that we would never create change by writing academic journal papers, even though we were both linked to universities at the time. I am quite sure in retrospect that we were right.
Now I am a full time academic as my day job and I have five such papers in progress right now. But what will have more impact, those papers, or this blog? You already know the answer to that.
We need more academic blogs.
And we need their role to be recognised as of importance in themselves.
But I am not sure there is much chance of that happening. We'll throw money at producing papers of little likely overall consequence instead, I am afraid to say.
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More power to your blogging elbow Richard! I’d be very ill-informed if I only had academic papers to read.
I’d also like to see you do much more in video form (I refuse to use the term vlogger).
The US MMT (I mean MMS) folk use video more than we see in the UK. When they debate the issue with opponents, it can be very illuminating.
I accept of course that you are already extremely busy, so I should have widened my appeal for video to other MMT folk in the UK.
Busy?
Moi?
Well, actually, yes….
It is something I would like to do more of
Just leave your £10 notes at home.
Twenties now….
Yes, but, how do you find them? In the old days you knew which journals to consult and they were there in the (university) library or you ordered an article over the wire. And there was some editorial input, if only limiting the word count. Twitter seems to me a complete waste of time and is only fit for insults. Blogs are better, but there’s no editor telling someone to make their case more succinctly as they ramble off on an ego-trip. (doesn’t happen here, “and I mean that most sincerely folks”)
Maybe there’s room for online journals, but is peer review dead?
Peer review that is used to maintain the status quo – as it is in economics – should be dead
“Peer review that is used to maintain the status quo — as it is in economics — should be dead”
Yes, perhaps, but in its absence there needs to be something that represents a recognised standard of credibility (there really does) otherwise we end up in that Murdoch-brained, universally subjective dud world where any dubiously-funded charlatan outfit or internet wacko gets equal status with those that work hard to maintain a genuine science or discipline.
The job of checking sources etc. is already hard enough and I don’t want it to get any harder. It really does help if we have some objective reference criteria.
Agreed
The arXiv.org has been very successful. It’s a moderated rather than a peer reviewed system, and most of the published work in mathematics and physics is then accepted by the Journals.
I see that it has a section for Economics, which only started in late 2017 and appears to be restricted currently to a single category of Econometrics. It might be useful if it was expanded to other areas, and could provide a useful route for publication of heterodox theories (and systems!).
The moderator is Victor Chernozhukov (MIT); also associated are Iván Fernández-Val (Boston University), Marc Henry (Penn State), Francesca Molinari (Cornell), Jörg Stoye (Bonn & Cornell) and Martin Weidner (University College London).
Are any of them sympathetic to the views expressed here?
I confess I do not know….
Having looked them up, they are all econometricians/statisticians, so not much help there *probably*!
That’s an interesting compromise.
It strikes me the Wikileaks showed there are a number of very knowledgable people in the State Dept.. There are also a number of original economists like Stephanie Kelton and Michael Hudson. Yet the top level of political and economic debate in the US, and to an extent here, is dominated by people whose ideas seem rooted in the 1950s.
I suppose that it shows the inertia of the vested interests and billionaire funded ‘think tanks’ . I came across one site Turning Point USA which has a project called ‘Professor Watch’.
this is what it says:
Welcome to Professor Watchlist, a project of Turning Point USA and Turning Point News. The mission of Professor Watchlist is to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.
This watchlist is an aggregated list of pre-existing news stories that were published by a variety of news organizations. While we accept tips for new additions on our website, we only publish profiles on incidents that have already been reported by a credible source.
TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right for professors to say whatever they wish; however students, parents, and alumni deserve to know the specific incidents and names of professors that advance a radical agenda in lecture halls.
I dare say you, Richard, would be on their list. It shows to me how important the work that you and your colleagues do, is for us.
I make clear my respect for markets in my work
And liberal freedoms
And the fact that many so called markets abuse them which requires state intervention so that we get something approximating to the supposed market ideal
I suspect that would not be popular
Another problem is that a large proportion of peer-reviewed academic papers, funded by state institutions, then appear exclusively in journals with eye-wateringly high subscription rates.
Unless you have access to an institution able to afford these subscriptions, they are out of reach. That’s a disaster.
Good point but that’s not extraordinary. Its typical of institutionalised elitism.
I think G Hewitt is right.
Blogs like yours are fantastic, and I have learned so much from reading them. (I subscribe to about 10 blogs on various topics–some frivolous, some not.) But every blog I have subscribed to has been suggested to me by somebody I know. In other words, they’ve all just fallen into my lap.
It would be excellent if there was an online resource that lists bloggers and gives a short spiel about their credentials and the topics of their blogs. (Preferably in categories.) So when I’m looking for information on certain subjects, I can easily find bloggers who know their stuff. Maybe this resource already exists, but if it does, I’m not aware of it.
Blogs are a fantastic way to learn. It’s finding good blogs in the first place that can be problematic.
I don’t know of that resource
You (and Klugman) are right, Richard, but the problem is deeper. There is also a great need for serious in-depth research, and critical debate. But few academics have the time to do such research, as well as the other stuff in their day jobs, and engage in the policy debates via blogs and tweets. This is also a loss. If you remember, when TJN started it also drew people like me and Ronen Palan, who had done research on tax havens and the offshore system. I think this strengthened TJN’s campaigning, but it’s hard to sustain the combination of solid research and active campaigning.
Sol
I agree: I am finding that a real problem. 14 hours a day are required.
Richard