The State of Economics in 2024: Abstraction, Centralization, and Isolation

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In recent years, economists have multiplied iconoclast declarations denouncing the state of economics as an academic discipline. In many instances, they point out the lack of scientificity of exceedingly mathematical methods that often hide ideological biases, in others they criticize the power dynamics and sociological forces that impede the pressing renewal of economic thought. Recent economic awards turned the spotlight to new empirical research methods, grounded in real-world facts and often critical of the dominant paradigm and its theoretical predictions based on abstruse model assumptions.

In the AEA’s Journal of Economic Perspectives, the sociologist Marion Fourcade, together with economists Etienne Ollion and Yann Algan, described the sociological forces that contribute to the lack of plurality in economics. They started by underlining how, sociologically speaking,  economics is the only social science that is virtually identical to STEM disciplines. First, economics stands out from other social sciences because of the high prestige it enjoys; it is the only social science with a Nobel prize. Its high value in the labor market is indicated by the high salaries associated with the discipline, way above other social sciences, and above most STEM disciplines except for computer science and engineering. It is worth noting that historically, a lot of renowned economists were STEM undergraduates, and many neoclassical “economic laws” are strongly inspired by physics’ universal natural laws. The gender imbalances it also shares with STEM disciplines are reflective of the growing reliance on quantitative methods induced by self-selection patterns that conform to gender stereotypes. 

Secondly, economics is characterized by a hierarchical structure and a greater concentration of powers than other social science disciplines. This difference is only exacerbated when one compares the top economic institutions with those consisting of other social sciences. From 2010 to 2014, 70% of the American Economic Association’s executive council was made of graduates from the top 5 departments of the country while it was only 15% and 20% for Political Science and Sociology equivalents respectively. From 2000 to 2009, 40% of citations in the top 25 economic journals stemmed from the AEA Review while this figure was only around 20% in other social sciences. The greater prestige and concentration of powers in economics contribute to economists’ complacency and to their smugness towards other social sciences. In a 2005 survey, it was estimated that “77 percent of economics graduate students in elite programs agree with the statement that “economics is the most scientific of the social sciences.’”

Economists often justify their high social status and their alleged higher scientificity by the heightened selectivity of their curricula and their greater use of quantitative methods compared to other social sciences, which they associate with higher intellectual capacities. These elitist perceptions induce self-selection mechanisms that contribute to the exclusion of women through gender stereotypes but also of students from more modest backgrounds who have a higher tendency to limit their ambitions proportionally to their parents’ educational achievements. As seen in Bourdieu’s works, elitist disciplines tend to have stronger social stratification and inequality than others. Children of academic achievers (white collars and teachers) who inherit their parents’ cultural capital are more overrepresented in the most selective academic disciplines like STEM or economics. This is especially true in the top economics departments where selection criteria are the most mathematical and elitist.

Nonetheless, we should not forget that economics is not limited to its positivist dimension that aims to establish truths, it also has a prescriptive normative dimension greatly influential in policy-making. The very high concentration of students from privileged backgrounds does not favour the renewal of economic thought and a greater diversity of students could help foster innovative policy thinking outside of mainstream currents. However, beyond economists’ background, their current social position also influences their thought. As outlined before, the work conducted by economists in academia is much more valued by the market than that of other social sciences: 40% of finance and industrial economics authors’ income stems from their consulting activities for governments and private firms. These consulting activities as well as the frequent participation of economists in executive committees could incentivize economists to defend private interests by maintaining the status quo in economic thought. 

Another characteristic of economics curricula is their relative isolation from other social sciences. Since WW2, the social sciences in academia have seen advancement and a steep demographic growth that led to an ever-increasing differentiation and hyper-specialization of social sciences. Economics’ higher social status and greater reliance on quantitative methods contribute to their despise of other social sciences methods: 57% of economists disagreed with the following proposition: “In general, interdisciplinary knowledge is better than knowledge obtained by a single discipline” while disagreement in other social sciences did not go above 30%. Consequently, economists rarely cooperate with other social scientists, and this can be seen by the extra-disciplinary citations which are much lower in economics than in other social sciences. Beyond social differences, this impermeability can be explained by the fundamental difference between the neoclassical economic method and that of other social sciences: assumed well-behaved individual preferences shape markets and social processes and not the converse. Since the 1970s, economists like Gary Becker have even gone as far as expanding the alleged superiority of the economic method outside of the “rare allocation of goods and services in a market” and into other social sciences’ usual fields of study. This ultimate affront to the other social sciences illustrates the depth of the divide between economics and other social sciences.