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0 pointscjbgkagh5mo ago0 comments

My sampling of my interactions with young PhD economists is that they were all Neo-Keynesian, the only people I’ve met who are of the Austrian school were Engineers.

I don’t doubt that the economics profession has been shaped by politics but it appears they are and have been rather willing participants.

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bee_rider5mo ago

Economics involves studying how the economy should be managed, it is an inherently political field. Declaring one school political and another non-political is itself a political sleight of hand.

cjbgkaghOP5mo ago

> Declaring one school political and another non-political

If I were to make a distinction it would be that Austrian is a Positive Theory and Neo-Keynesian is a Normative theory, and I think it’s fair to say that normative theories are more open to political influence than positive ones.

hapless5mo ago

One school consists of every university in the world. The other school is George Mason University, and, uh, the John Birch Society.

luther075mo ago

Also Grove City College has been dedicated to the Austrian School since 1956 apparently, when they hired Hans Sennholz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Sennholz

mothballed5mo ago

I'm pretty sure UNLV still has Hoppe and they only let go of Rothbard because he died. Which pairs pretty well with the pretty laissez-faire roots of Nevada.

nemo44x5mo ago

It’s not surprising that aspiring economists prefer the theory which loads them with power.

jjk1665mo ago

That's like finding that very few PhD evolutionary biologists are young earth creationists. People who study economics wind up being neo-keynesians because that's what the data supports.

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