Seeing like a macroeconomist: varieties of formalisation, professional incentives and academic ideational change

ABSTRACT

An emerging literature in political economy points to ‘hinges’ between academia and policy as important sites of analysis and emphasises the role of quantitative models in lending scientific legitimacy to economic ideas. This paper contributes to this literature by asking: what drives change in what is seen as authoritative macroeconomic modelling in academic settings? And how do drivers of ideational change in academia differ from drivers of ideational change in economic policy institutions? In answering these questions the paper emphasises the way in which variations in the formal structures of macroeconomic models interact with academics’ individual professional incentives. Specifically, it argues that ‘portable’ forms of modelling that do not require access to extensive resources are likely to trump ‘fixed’ and resource-intensive forms of modelling. Making this distinction helps elucidate critical junctures in the history of macroeconomic thought. Analytically, the paper relies on a framework that connects the sociology of science, the sociology of professions and the institutionalist tradition in political economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Economics profession
• formalization
• paradigm shifts
• economic ideas
• economic models

Acknowledgements

My warmest thanks to Cornel Ban, Mark Blyth, Daniela Gabor, Henry Farrell, Alexander Gourevitch and James Morone. All mistakes are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This choice of period is demarcated on the one side by the Great Crash of 1929 and on the other by the U.S. entry into the Second World War.

2 Author’s emphasis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oddný Helgadóttir

Oddný Helgadóttir is an assistant professor at the Copenhagen Business School's Department of Organization.