Why aren’t more economists looking for answers to the important questions in economics? A report in a microbiology journal research report may have the answer.
At the outset, the report considers an important question. Why, since there are 19,000 genes in the human genome, is research concentrated on just 2,000 of them?
The title of their report is “Large-scale investigation of the reasons why potential important genes are ignored,” and it appeared in a recent edition of the PLos Biology Journal. In it, the authors — T. Stoeger, M. Gerlach, and Amaral Nunes — found that there are two basic causes for the lopsided research. The first is that it is simply easier to do research on a gene on which much work has already been done than to initiate research on a gene about which little or nothing is known.
It is also easier to obtain peer reviews, publication and grant money for research on genes which have accumulated a database of research results.
In other words, a scientist asking the bigger questions is likely to find himself or herself an outsider with no job offers, no grant money, and no publications. And we find ourselves with less insight into the human genome.
There is a similar pattern afflicting economics. It is easier to find a job in academia or industry if an economist follows the money and works in already plowed fields. We end up knowing more and more about less and less, but it doesn’t pay, literally, to ask too many questions.
It may have something to do with access. It is hard to believe now but economics was once a very popular subject of discussions in people’s homes and workplaces. The giants of economics all wrote books which were readable by the general public, which meant a broader scope to their perspective and work. Adam Smith’s book, “The Wealth of Nations” (shortened title), was an enormously popular book in England and in Europe after it was published in 1776. It is a long book but was and is accessible for the general reader.
Karl Marx’s book, “Das Kapital” is more of a struggle for readers because of the density of his prose — either in the original German or in translation — but still readable. And John Maynard Keynes’ book, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” was deliberately aimed at the general reader, as he notes in the introduction.
All three radically changed our thinking about economics by asking “big” questions: Smith wondering our instincts of self-interest were a sin and finding that they could benefit mankind, Marx wondering if those same instincts would interact with technology to hurt labor and the lower classes, and Keynes wondering why the global recession was lasting so long and finding that government spending could provide the jump-start that the economy needed.
Where are today’s giants? Who will ask the questions and provide the answers that will radically change and improve our economic understanding? Are we weeding them out somehow or just hitting a dry patch?
The answer is: both.
Our higher education system, and subsequent employment system, both encourage students to adopt “grade-engineering’ to maximize their GPA in every course, and that does not encourage wondering about questions that are not part of the testing system. Professors who persist in raising such questions for discussion purposes are likely to be punished in teacher evaluations and perhaps other ways.
Higher education’s drift toward training rather than education has aggravated this particular problem because employers, who naturally influence training, have an instinct favoring specialization.
The big questions in economics haven’t gone away but we seem to have lost interest in them. And economics has become far less accessible to the general reader, leaving that audience to the single-issue politics crowd and a few bloggers. Economists have still not realized that higher mathematics, in addition to limiting research topics and scope, also constructs a barrier to most readers.
Will economics get its giants back? As long as there is a young person out there interested in economics and wondering about big questions there is hope. All it takes is one.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant.
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