This paper argues for two propositions. (I) Large asymmetries of power, status and influence exist between economists. These asymmetries constitute a hierarchy that is steeper than it could be and steeper than hierarchies in other disciplines. (II) This situation has potentially significant epistemic consequences. I collect data on the social organization of economics to show (I). I then argue that the hierarchy in economics heightens conservative selection biases, restricts criticism between economists and disincentivizes the development of novel research. These factors together constrain economics’ capacity to develop new beliefs and reduce the likelihood that its outputs will be true.

Ascriptions of objectivity carry significant weight. But they can also cause confusion because wildly different ideas of what it means to be objective are common. Faced with this, some philosophers have argued that objectivity should be eliminated. I will argue, against one such position, that objectivity can be useful even though it is plural. I will then propose a contextualist approach for dealing with objectivity as a way of rescuing what is useful about objectivity while acknowledging its plurality.

We distinguish between two different strategies in methodology of economics. The big picture strategy, dominant in the twentieth century, ascribed to economics a unified method and evaluated this method against a single criterion of 'science'. In the last thirty years a second strategy gained prominence: fine-grained studies of how some specific technique common in economics can achieve one or more epistemic goal. We argue that recent developments in philosophy of science and in economics warrant a return to big picturebut now reinvented. It should focus on a new question, already intensely debated within the profession: is the organization of economics healthy and appropriate? KEYWORDS Empirical turn; social organization of science; philosophy of economics; rational choice model; hierarchy JEL CODES A12; A13; A14; B40; B41 Big-picture versus fine-grainedThe big-picture approach has a long, proud history. It stretches back to John Stuart Mill, who defended political economy as a science that studies phenomena that arise from the pursuit of

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