Masonomics --- Not Really!!!

Over at Blogging Heads TV Russ and Arnold have a discussion about current events.  Both Russ and Arnold have important things to say and they tend to say them very well.  Both have found their intellectual niche in the area of economic communication.

Recently Joseph Lawler at The American Spectator argued that George Mason has a comparative advantage in economc blogging.  As he wrote:

Of course it seems like trading research papers for blogging is a risky strategy for boosting rankings and prestige. It is unclear whether economics departments in general will value prolific commentary as much as published research. What is clear, though, is that not only does George Mason have a comparative advantage in blogging, but also that it's to everyone's advantage to have these economists sharing their thoughts in an approachable format.

There is a growing impression that all we do at GMU is public intellectual work in economics (blogs, trade books, op-eds, magazine articles, podcasts, TV shows, etc.) and that little scientific work goes on (journal articles and university press books, presentations at research seminiars and scientific conferences, etc.).  A recent graduate from a rather low ranked PhD program actually told one of our students at the AEA meetings that 'Nobody at GMU is a serious economist, they are all philosophers who don't know technical economics.'  Such ignorance could be dismissed if it was isolated, but this charge is often repeated by faculty members at  would-be rival graduate programs.

This impression is factually wrong and it must be corrected.  Before I do that, let me state something that should be obvious --- we all respect as a legitimate and in fact highly valuable set of professional activities as economists the sort of public intellectual work represented by Russ and Arnold.  Henry Simons informed his students that the primary purpose of the academic economist is to fight the public fallacies that too often capture the hearts and minds of politicians, policy-makers, and citizens.  James Buchanan also stresses this fundamental role of the economist in his essay "Economics as a Public Science". Citizens must be informed participants in the democratic process, and one of our jobs as an economist is to help them become informed --- something you cannot do without absorbing the teachings of economics from Smith and Hume to Say and Ricardo; from Mises and Hayek to Friedman and Buchanan.

In these discussions of the role of the academc economist as teacher the implied context is the undergraduate classroom, and the public realm of discourse.  But there is also our role as economic scholars and researchers who are entrusted to train graduate students --- both in the ways of doing scholarship and research, and in the ways of teaching undergraduates and graduate students (if they get that opportunity down the road).  One of the biggest errors we have made as a discipline, was that we trained our recent PhD students to teach undergraduate courses as if they were water-downed versions of their core PhD courses.  This is unacceptable pedagogy and it has done much damage to the transmission of knowledge from teachers to students at the undergraduate level.  But we would make a mistake if we made the opposite mistake as well --- taught PhD students as if they were undergraduate students and we didn't damand logical rigor and empirical precision from them.  We have to introduce undergraduates to the economic way of thinking, but we have to train graduate students to think like an economist, to talk like an economist, and to combine curiosity, analytical skill, and scholarly values.  They must speak to their peers, present their papers at conferences full of peers, submit those papers to peer review, subject their books to the harsh evaluation of peer reviewers and scientific boards, etc.

Economic research and scholarship is NOT blogging.  Just as teaching Econ 101 is  NOT publishing original research.  We are scholar/teachers and both activities should be viewed broadly in my opinion, but we also shouldn't conflate these activities.

It is fantastic that GMU is known for its teaching activities both inside and outside of the classroom.  For many years, Walter Williams was the main representative of such of activities, but my senior colleague Jim Bennett has also been in the public eye for years with his works on unions and interest group politics.  For years neither Walter nor Jim taught in the PhD program.  For the past decade Walter has taught the core microeconomics course in the PhD program --- a course modeled on the course he took with Armen Alchian at UCLA.  It is widely acknowledged that nobody taught the economic way of thinking better than Alchian.

But GMU's main claim as a PhD program cannot rest on its blogging activity and other efforts at popularizing economic ideas and engaging in public policy discourse.  Relevance is a virtue at GMU economics, but the relevance comes from having sound economic research to back up the claims being made.  We are political economists but primarily scientific/scholarly political economists.   That is what Masonomics is, not blogging.

Consider the work of the patron saints of GMU's research programs: F. A. Hayek (Nobel 1974), James Buchanan (Nobel 1986), and Vernon Smith (Nobel 2002).  The Center for the Study of Market Processes, the Center for the Study of Public Choice, and The Interdisciplinary Center for Experimental Economics define our collective mission in economic research and graduate education.  We have also developed research specialties in history of economic thought and methodology, law and economics, neuroeconomics, religion and economics, and institutions and economic history.  Look at the CV of my colleagues such as Thomas Stratmann, Dan Houser, Roger Congleton, Richard Wagner, Charles Rowley, and of course Pete Leeson.  These CVs are peppered with hits in the AER, JPE, APSR, AJPS, JLE and JLS, as well as the leading outlets in the research areas of Austrian economics, public choice, law and economics, and history of economic thought.  Look at the citation pattern of my colleagues, look at their productivity in terms of articles per year, and look at the placement in high impact journals as well as leading field journals.  Compare that with the faculty at peer institutions --- the faculty at GMU are more productive, higher impact, and more creative in content than our peer graduate programs.  That is a factual statement subject to refutation, but the evidence collected to date in journal article after journal article that ranks graduate programs backs my claim, whereas the derogatory comments directed at the economics community at GMU are based on false impression.  Yes, we at GMU encourage one another publish with CATO, but we demand that they also publish in peer reviewed outlets.  Yes, we at GMU post on blogs, write op-eds, give public lectures, go on TV or the radio, but tenure, promotion, and raises are determined primarily by scientific output.

Masonomics is about bold scholarship and a commitment to communicate the results of that research to widest possible audience of peers in economics and the social sciences and where appropriate to the policy community and the general public.  It is NOT about public discourse alone.  The heart and soul of Masonomics isn't to be found on blogs, but in classrooms full of graduate students, seminars where faculty and students critically engage in the latest working papers presented by outside scholars, the graduate student workshop where their papers are critically discussed, and the informal research lunch that is conducted every two weeks or so.   The intellectual excitement for economics at GMU is actually under-represented on the blog, not over-represented.  The blogs are great, the podcasts are outstanding, the op-eds are edifying, and the popular books are fun.  Let me repeat, at GMU our economics department values this sort of 'educational' activity and view it as a legitimate use of a professional economists time and intellectual energies.  Our economists who have focused on this set of activites are rightly considered among the best in the world.  But our economics department is defined by our research and graduate education activities.

I'd like to invite Mr. Lawler and those who run the bloggingheads.tv to stop being lazy and come check us out -- seminars are taking place on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday both in Fairfax and Arlington, and PhD courses are taking place on Monday through Thursday primarily in Fairfax and in the 4:30 and then 7:30 time slots.  There you will see the progressive research programs of Hayek, Buchanan, and Smith being pursued in new and different directions.  Relevance is indeed a virtue for Masonomics, but that relevance is based on the hard thinking tested by harsh criticism that can be found not at blogs and entertaining lunches, but in our classrooms, seminar discussions, and peer reviewed journals and university presses.

Comments

[Josh Hall]

Well put Pete. This is one of the key reasons that Scott B. and I wrote our little Vienna to Virginia paper - to show (at least part) of the engagement with the profession that is going on as part of the training of graduate students.

It is one thing to be able to criticize, it is another to engage with serious ideas in a way that can be published in top journals. This is why I have no respect for so-called "rigorous" economists from similarly-ranked departments. I see them every year at the SEAs criticizing Mason-style political economy as not being rigorous enough. But if you look, their vitas are empty except for conference presentations.

Lord knows I can do better at engaging with the larger profession - my attempts at JLE, EI, SEJ, Public Choice places have so far been deemed unworthy. But, at least I'm trying, as are Chris, Pete, Ed, many of the current GMU students and many of the WVU students. That's why this job market is still been successful for them - they know how to do more than be economic communicators (although that is important).

It would help if GMU would update its website so as to highlight what the faculty are doing. I doubt many outside our circles know as grad student had an AER last year, for example.

[Peter Boettke]

Josh,

There are several issues involved here. The public intellectual work necessarily attracts more attention, so sometimes people just will not look hard at the facts concerning journal publication.

Yes we had a graduate student in the AER last year, and another graduate student in the AER about five years before. I co-authored papers with graduate students that ended up not only in Austrian, public choice, history of thought, and libertarian journals, but also in JEBO and even the EJ.

I recommend that people also look at the productivity of our graduates from our PhD program in terms of placement, journal publication, books, research grants, professional rewards, etc.

Now you raise a very important point about our web site. But if you go to individual websites you can get more accurate information. Our departmental website hasn't been consistently managed in over five years. We just don't have a full time web manager to do the job. We haven't really managed our brandname capital with respect to our academic work as we should have so some of the problems are our own creation. Still, you just need to look at what they have been doing and track via EconLit, or another research tracking program.

Research productivity and research impact are pretty easily measured.

[Brian Pitt]

Very Well put!

[Dave Prychitko]

"One of the biggest errors we have made as a discipline, was that we trained our recent PhD students to teach undergraduate courses as if they were water-downed versions of their core PhD courses. This is unacceptable pedagogy and it has done much damage to the transmission of knowledge from teachers to students at the undergraduate level. But we would make a mistake if we made the opposite mistake as well --- taught PhD students as if they were undergraduate students and we didn't damand logical rigor and empirical precision from them.:

Here here!

[Bob]

Pete,
You and the people at GMU Economics should be proud of the forceful and insightful service you provide to the public's knowledge of Economics. You are getting some push back from jealous and angry economists from different ideological perspectives. This is to be expected when you speak truth to power. St. Thomas Aquinas, Galileo, Michael Angelo and most other great minds were all criticized as heretics or quacks only to be proven correct in due time. So BUCK UP fellow JERSEYITE! Your mission is just, right and most appreciated by the people who count. Don't let the defenders of the "status quo" discourage you or any other like minded seekers of the truth! I thinks it's time for a new "Free To Choose" like TV show Austrian Style to educate the public about Economics. It is up to GMU and other institutions to make sure the wisdom of Menger, Mises, Hayek and others are studied, shared and followed for the benefit of mankind!

[H]

"Look at the CV of my colleagues such as Thomas Stratmann, Dan Houser, Roger Congleton, Richard Wagner, Charles Rowley, and of course Pete Leeson. "

But these are the professors who don't blog.

[Peter Boettke]

That is beside the point, the claim is that all we do at GMU is blog. We don't. Also, look at the CV of Pete Leeson --- and he definitely blogs here. Also, you can look at my own CV if you care to. Or for that matter the CV of Tyler Cowen and Bryan Caplan --- both of whom are active publishers in the economcs profession.

Just do a check on SSRN or EconLit, and compare the output to other peer departments. Then do a SSCI analysis and compare impact of research.

Pete