Mata, Tiago;
(2017)
The economics of economists, institutional setting, individual incentives, and future prospects.
Journal of Economic Methodology
, 24
(1)
pp. 104-108.
10.1080/1350178X.2017.1287556.
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Abstract
The economics of economists, much like other disciplines squared, such as the history of historians or the sociology of sociologists, is a pursuit that courts overconfidence in a discipline’s explanatory powers. Fortunately and despite its title, this book is not written by economists claiming with self-loving enthusiasm that they are the best analysts of themselves. The reader is spared principal–agent models of the supervisor/graduate student relationship or labor market studies justifying the high salaries of the economics professoriate. Instead, what stands out from between the covers are the reasonable contributions of an eminent band of economic methodologists. The majority of the essays follow well-traveled itineraries. More than a couple of the essays collected are reprints and a handful of others restate arguments that will not surprise the advanced reader. The book is not what the title suggests, and that’s a good thing. To structure my review, I turn the misnomer into a riddle: what is the economics of economists without the economists? (or more prosaically, what kind of book is this?) I examine three possible answers. First, I consider if the volume is, as promised, a collection of papers on economics of economics albeit of an unconventional and novel kind. Second, if it is instead a compendium of past and recent contributions to the methodology and sociology of economics, and finally, whether it might be an original synthesis of economic methodology. I will show that each of these readings is both plausible and implausible.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The economics of economists, institutional setting, individual incentives, and future prospects |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/1350178X.2017.1287556 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2017.1287556 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author-accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Social Sciences, Economics, Business & Economics |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Science and Technology Studies |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10201001 |
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