Topics and readings

These topics won’t map cleanly into lectures, but it summarizes what we’ll aim to cover for this part of the course.

For readings not linked to below, I’ll do my best to make the readings available at the start of the course.

1. The ethics of research and policy advice

   • * National guidelines for research ethics in the social sciences, law and humanities.

2. Economists making things happen

   • * Michel Callon (2007). What Does It Mean to Say That Economics Is Performative? Chapter 11, p. 311-357 of Do Economists make Markets (ed by MacKenzie, Muniesa and Siu), Princeton University Press.
   • Gerald R. Faulhaber and William J. Baumol (1988). Economists as Innovators: Practical Products of Theoretical Research, Journal of Economic Literature, 26(2), 577-600.
   • * Ferraro et al (2005). Economics Language and Assumptions: How Theories can Become Self-Fulfilling. Academy of Management Research. 30(1), 8-24.
   • Luigi Zingales (2013). Preventing Economists’ Capture. In Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit it. Edited by Daniel Carpenter and David Moss.

3. The history of a scientific subject These readings are not selected only for their contents, but for the different approaches to writing intellectual history they represent.

   • * Card, David, and Stefano DellaVigna. 2013. Nine Facts about Top Journals in Economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 51 (1): 144-61.
   • B. F. Kiker (1966). The Historical Roots of the Concept of Human Capital, Journal of Political Economy, 74(5), 481-499.
   • Donald MacKenzie (2001). Physics and Finance: S-Terms and Modern Finance as a Topic for Science Studies, Science, Technology, & Human Values, 26(2), 115-144.
   • * Montesinos, Hugo & Brice, Brandon. (2019). The Era of Evidence.

4. The social science of science

   • * Fourcade, Marion, Etienne Ollion, and Yann Algan (2015). The Superiority of Economists. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(1): 89-114.
   • * John Gibson (2018). The Micro-Geography of Academic Research: How Distinctive is Economics?, Working Papers in Economics 18/03, University of Waikato.
   • Conley, John P., and Ali Sina Onder (2014). The Research Productivity of New PhDs in Economics: The Surprisingly High Non-success of the Successful. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(3): 205-16.
   • Arjo Klamer (2014). The culture of academic economics. In The Economics of Economists: Institutional Setting, Individual Incentives and Future Prospects. Edited by A. Lanteri and J. Vromen. Cambridge University Press.
   • * Sarsons, Heather. 2017. Recognition for Group Work: Gender Differences in Academia. American Economic Review, 107(5): 141-45.

5. Non-orthodox traditions

   • Tony Lawson (2006). The nature of heterodox economics. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 30(4), 483-505.
   • Yannick Slade-Caffarel (2018). The nature of heterodox economics revisited. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 43(3): 527–539.