Hi
I read somewhere (think it was Wikipedia) that 70 % of all university professors belongs to the neoclassical school. But how many are austrian? Not only talking about professors of course, but reserachers and economists working in the private sector (or should I say, outside universities)?
1 %? 5 %? More? Less?
/John
Based upon my experience, i’d say somewhere between 1-3%
The neoclassicalists are the highest of course, and you’d be suprised how many marxists there are teaching in our colleges…
Because they tend to self-select something that fits their profession, you will find most mathematically-inclined economists in the universities, most keynesians in government employment, and most austrian economists with real jobs.
Thank you.
The reason why austrians don’t work at university, is that because they won’t get employed because of their opinions, or is it because they don’t want to? Does supporting the austrian school openly decrease your chances of employment?
/John
Honest-to-goodness Das Kapital reading, card-carrying members of the communist party?
marxists teaching in college? what a joke
anyway the neo-classical tradition is still going strong and thus it is highly lickley that Austrian economists are mentioned. The problem with the Austrian school though is that they do not really offer anything new,and this is because the basic of their theories are covered by the classical economists of the french liberal tradition.
Like Say and Bastiat? Aha. You’d still be wrong though, because the source of any similarity between neoclassical and Austrian econ comes from the fact that both accept marginalism. So Austrian theories do not seem as outright threatening to neoclassicism as Marxian theories, which repudiate marginalism.
No, I don’t believe there are marxists teaching economics at college - you americans (I assume you are an american) use the words “marxist” and “socialist” too much, you are inflating it. Come over to Sweden and I’ll show you some real socialists.
I do think the austrians offer something new, appearently they are good at predicting crises at lest. The neoclassicals (okey, it’s granted that this is a big group) are too mathematical and rational. Homo Economicus is a joke.
/John
Actually at UMass/Amherst one of the economic professors is a marxist (or an anarcho-communist, idk).
Worldwide? probablly much less than 1%.
My micro econ teacher is very sypathetic to the free market, i’m not sure if she’s austrian, it’s unlikely though.
I think it’s more the case that Austrians are not able to offer enough of the sort of predictive mumbo jumbo that people want to hear. It’s not good enough to be able to say for example that there is a housing bubble and it will collapse. To be the hot superstar economist you have to be willing to predict when such things will happen.