Economists in Politics
Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17First version: 29 August 2015
A special case of intellectuals in politics, though nobody --- neither economists nor the intellectuals who call themselves intellectuals --- likes to hear it. The references here reflect the more obvious aspects of this, about explicitly economic policy, but I think it also goes deeper. There is, I think, a really great study to be written on the impact of John von Neumann, via game theory; I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that von Neumann was one of the most ideologically influential intellectuals of the 20th century, starting with, but by no means limited to, shaping the Cold War. (I am not a historian or political theorist so I am not equipped to write that, but I'd eagerly read it.)
--- I should probably add Mirowski's books under "to read" here, but I have an allergic reaction to his style.
See also:
- Recommended:
- Dean Baker, "Trade and inequality: The role of economists", Real-World Economics Review 45 (2008)
- Robert Driskill, "Deconstructing the Argument for Free Trade: A Case Study of the Role of Economists in Policy Debates", Economics and Philosophy 28 (2012): 1--30 [PDF preprint[
- William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics
- Yakov Feygin, Building a Ruin: The Cold War Politics of Soviet Economic Reform [Revision of Dr. Feygin's dissertation]
- Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers
- Zubin Jelveh, Bruce Kogut and Suresh Naidu, "Political Language in Economics", ssrn/2535453
- Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
- John Quiggin, Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us
- Dani Rodrik, "When Ideas Trump Interests: Preferences, Worldviews, and Policy Innovations", Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (2014): 189--208
- Francis Spufford, Red Plenty
- Modesty forbids me to recommend:
- CRS, Harmony of Means and Ends, and Extended Harmony, and Tiger-Repellent Drumming
- CRS, Dives, Lazarus, and Alice
- CRS, Deep Thought on the Ethical Relevance of Economic Analysis
- To read:
- Elizabeth Popp Berman, Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy
- Mark Blyth
- Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea
- Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century
- Avinash Dixit, The Making of Economic Policy: A Transaction-Cost Politics Perspective
- Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy, The Crisis of Neoliberalism
- Sebastian Edwards, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism [Interesting review in a somewhat-dodgy magazine]
- Marion Fourcade, Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s
- Julian Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China [There is an interesting excerpt on Joan Robinson]
- Stephen A. Marglin, The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community
- Bradley R. Simpson, Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960--1968
