This paper comments on the lead symposium article, “Reaching the Top?–On Gender Balance in the Economics Profession,†by Christina Jonung and Ann-Charlotte Ståhlberg. Using evidence from brain scans, mental ability tests, personality tests, and DNA, I show that the representation of...

Economics will always have few women so long as Max U rules the roost.

The Federal Reserve System is a major sponsor of monetary economics research by American economists. I provide some measures of the size of the Fed’s research program (both inputs and published outputs) and consider how the Fed’s sponsorship may directly and indirectly influence...

In the economics profession there is a tension between the scholastic orientation and the public discourse orientation. The former affirms certain academic conventions among economists such as mathematical model building and statistical significance. The latter emphasizes communicating with lay...

Adam Smith doubted an invisible hand in academia, saying that academia was prone to clubbish foolishness. From economics-department webpages, I collected data on Ph.D. origination of economics faculty. Using a ranking of 200 economics departments world-wide, I find that at the top departments...

Gunnar Myrdal urged economists to disclose their ideological sensibilities, to mitigate asymmetric-information problems in scientific discourse and to reduce the hazard of bias. Myrdal’s plea informs us of the importance of frank discussion of ideological sensibilities, including...

In figuring eminence in the social sciences, the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) is of great importance. Yet the SSCI selection process is a black box. Scrutiny of the SSCI journal list reveals that the stated SSCI journal selection criteria are vague and applied inconsistently. The Nation,...

Mathematical economics is compared and contrasted with mathematical engineering. Engineers use mathematics where it is practical and cost-effective, sometimes cutting corners, and leaving theorems and derivations to professional mathematicians. In contrast, papers by mathematical economists are...

This paper comments on the lead symposium article, “Reaching the Top?–On Gender Balance in the Economics Profession,†by Christina Jonung and Ann-Charlotte Ståhlberg. Jonung and Ståhlberg demonstrate that the economics profession recruits few women even in (or especially in)...

Administrators at many universities are using the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) measures of departmental performance to assess the performance of their economics departments. The NRC methodology measures faculty publications, citations, and grants in specific ways, which...