What Does it Take to be a Good Economist?

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1987

As economists, we have an interest in and individual knowledge of the initiation process that turns students into professional economists. However, other than anecdotal evidence, very little in the way of data exists. This paper is a step toward providing insight into that process. We obtained our data from questionnaires distributed to graduate students at six top-ranking graduate economic programs -- University of Chicago, Columbia University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Yale University -- exploring who current graduate students are and what they think about economics, the economy, and graduate school. The 212 respondents were relatively equally divided by year of study. We followed up our survey with a series of interviews. Certain results seem unambiguous and worth repeating. Specifically, there is a significant variety of opinions among graduate economics students and among the schools in the survey, and there definitely s...

Journal of Public Policy, 1992

tells us, is as much an art as it is a science (p. 117). But the art has been lost. The authors perceive a decline in the quality of teaching as well as a deterioration in the prestige of the profession. They complain that despite the obvious tentativeness and ambiguity in the measurement of economic phenomena, their colleagues often rely on numbers 'with religious solemnity' (p. 129). The positivist creed of the post-1950s, Colander claims, has blinded economists to history, institutions and nonformal empirical testing. Perverse consequences followed after economic orthodoxy put sociological, political and cultural insights aside. The 'mask of science', Brenner says, has mostly led economists to the use of obscure language and to the building of models in which there is no data or where data are used thoughtlessly. In Arjo Klamer's view, economists are so excessively specialised that their rhetorical devices have been of little help to their audience (p. 52). Economic predictions are inaccurate; policies are poorly guided. Economists seem to think that their policy advice has done 'much harm' (Herbert Grubel, p. 260). What is wrong with the hundred or so Ph.D. programs in economics in the United States? In 1988, the American Economic Association formed the Commission on Graduate Economic Education to address this concern. Professors Colander and Brenner regard COGEE's report as insufficiently critical. Here are some of the objections we find in Educating Economists. First, the existence of many of these programs is probably little more than a cost-saving device. Graduate students teach undergraduate courses at a low price. Second, graduate students are trained to be academics involved in theoretical research. Applied economics tends to be viewed 'with derision'. Third, it is not the needs of the students but the professors' research interests that guide teaching. Fourth, because there is so little emphasis on the limitations of economic modeling, students are being taught 'exactitude rather than truth' (p. 109). Fifth, the structure of incentives and the lack of exposure to a plurality of ideas reinforces conformity to orthodoxy. Finally, as the essays by Robert B. Zevin, Joanna Wayland Woos and Arthur G. Woolf emphasise, graduate programs in economics fail to take into consideration the skills required by employers in business, undergraduate education and government. Although about half the graduate students in economics in the U.S. are foreigners (p.

Journal of Economic Methodology, 2020

2004

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2005

2012

Let me conclude by reiterating my main point. Government, business, and undergraduate teaching economists play an important role in the economics profession. The training of graduate students does not appropriately recognize that important role. It is time to change that. To bring about change government, business, and undergraduate teaching economists have to stand up for what they do, organize together, and let their needs be known. They have the power of the job; they should use it.

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2005

This paper argues that, currently, significant change is taking place in economics because (1) technological changes in analytic and computing methods are opening up new avenues of study, and (2) the 'low hanging fruit' from previous approaches and methods have already been picked. It offers a vision of the future of economics that sees economists focusing less on the study

The Journal of Economic Education, 2019

Over the past decades, econometrics and formal empirical methods have become more and more important to economics and hence to the teaching of economics. This is a natural movement reflecting the enormous computational and analytic technological advances in data collection and analysis. Within the economics major today there are many more courses in econometrics and statistics than there were in the past; in addition, most upper-level field courses include an almost mandatory econometrics component. Because the introductory and intermediate macro and micro courses currently do not include an introduction to econometrics, and instead concentrate on teaching students theory, this means that in addition to their core theory courses, undergraduate economics students need a core metrics course, or, better yet, a set of core metric courses, in addition to their introductory and intermediate theory core courses to properly prepare them for their field courses. Today, the two core pillars of economic teaching are theory courses and metrics courses. The increasing importance of econometrics can be seen in the way economists think of themselves in relation to other social scientists. Even as late as the early 1980s, when I interviewed graduate students for my "Making of an Economist" article (Colander and Klamer 1987), students told me that it was economists' use of rational choice theory that defined an economist. 1 By the 2000s that had changed, and in interviews I did for my "Making of an Economist, Redux" article (Colander 2005), students told me with pride that, from their point of view, what differentiated economists from other social scientists was their high-powered econometric methods that allowed them to pull information from data, not their use of rational choice theory. Modern economists consider themselves best among social scientists at processing and analyzing data. 2 In reflecting on these developments, it is useful to remember that good economic policy analysis, and hence, good economic training, has always been empirical and evidenced-based, at least in the eyes of the economists doing it. It is just that, before the recent formal empirical turn in economics, the empirical methods used to apply the theory to the real world were informal and involved interpretation and judgments that went far beyond formal scientific analysis. Applied economics of the past relied on reflective reasoning, or as Deirdre McCloskey classifies them-rhetorical skills. Good old-style economists could process poorly specified empirical data and theory jointly, creatively capturing the essence of theories, and relating them to the real world in a way that left others with an "aha" sense-yes, that is the way it works. Those economists who were superb at it, such as J. M. Keynes, Jacob Viner, Joan Robinson, Fritz Machlup, or Armen Alchian, were seen as role models for how good applied economics was done. Their methods were discursive;

2020

The responses to questions by 155 students revealed the following, most important facts. The students predominantly came from families with high incomes. They have leftist political leanings, though through their training, more have turned right than left.