Economists in Politics
12 Apr 2022 22:49
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. (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: Economics; The World Bank
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Yakov Feygin, Reforming the Cold War State: Economic Thought, Internationalization, and the Politics of Soviet Reform, 1955--1985 [Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2017]
- 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
