Exploring the Trade (Policy) Narratives in Economic Elite Discourse

Aistleitner, Matthias; Pühringer, Stephan

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3640321

SSRN Journal

2020

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3640321

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Exploring the Trade (Policy) Narratives in Economic Elite Discourse

Matthias Aistleitner

Stephan Pühringer

Abstract: as well as the participants of the 2 nd Vienna Conference on Pluralism in Economics in April 2019 for their comments on an earlier version of this paper as well as Ernest Aigner, who has provided us with citation data.

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Cited by 2 publications

References 45 publications

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The Trade (Policy) Discourse in Top Economics Journals

Aistleitner

Pühringer

2020

New Political Economy

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In the aftermath of recent populist upheavals in Europe, nationalist economic policies challenge the overly positive view on economic integration and the reduction of trade barriers established by standard economic theory. For quite a long time the great majority of economists supported trade liberalisation policies, at least those actively engaged in policy advice or public debates. In this paper, we examine the elite economics discourse on trade policies during the last 20 years regarding specific characteristics of authors, affiliations, citation patterns, the overall attitude towards trade, as well as the methodological approach applied in these papers. Our analysis yields the following results: First, the hierarchical structure of economics also manifests in the debate about trade. Second, while we found some indications of a shift towards more empirically oriented work, quite often empirical data is solely used to calibrate models rather than to challenge potentially biased theoretical assumptions. Third, top economic discourses on trade are predominantly characterised by a normative bias in favour of tradeliberalisation-policies. Forth, we found that other-than-economic impacts and implications of trade policies (political, social and cultural as well as environmental issues) to a great extent either remain unmentioned or are rationalised by means of pure economic criteria. KEYWORDS Trade evaluation; trade policies; 'empirical turn'; social studies of economics; bibliometric analysis; top economic journals JEL CODES A12; A14; B41; F10 It has long been an unspoken rule of public engagement for economists that they should champion trade and not dwell too much on the fine print. (Rodrik 2018

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The Trade (Policy) Discourse in Top Economics Journals

Aistleitner

Pühringer

2020

New Political Economy

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The Space of Research Topics in Economics: Scientific Position-Takings and Individual Positions in Swiss Economic Science

Rossier,

Benz,

Grau Larsen

et al. 2023

oeconomia

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Within the Social Studies of Economics, research has been dominated by case-oriented approaches. In this article, we propose and demonstrate the value of adding a quantitative, field-theoretical approach. Specifically, we outline a perspective for studying economics as a social field, focusing on the homology between research topics and the resources and characteristics of researchers. We specifically attend to the Swiss case, entailing integration of this highly internationalised discipline within national elite networks. Our study draws on a combination of two data sources: the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), which provides abstracts of all projects funded since 2008, and the Swiss Elite Database, which contains extensive prosopographical data on all tenured economics professors employed at Swiss universities. In the first analytical part of the study, we construct the space of research topics based on 637 abstracts using Latent Dirichlet Allocation, a topic modelling technique. We identify a set of recurring topics, using multiple correspondence analysis to project these topics into a geometric space, thereby identifying three main dimensions structuring the space of the topics: (1) financial markets versus labour and behaviour economics, (2) macroeconomics versus microeconomics and (3) public economics versus labour economics. In the second part of the study, we map the most frequently used terms in relation to the profiles of the 647 applicants (including 156 economics professors). Our findings reveal a homology existing between the space of topics and the space of individual positions. Unlike microeconomics topics, macroeconomics topics are linked to scientific and academic prestige. Other individual properties and resources, such as those related to public expertise, corporate networks or gender are linked, respectively, to the study of state and public concerns and market surveillance, corporate governance, and gendered inequalities in the workplace. This article provides an original quantitative and computational approach that opens up new and promising research avenues for expanding the Social Studies of Economics and the history of economic thought.

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Exploring the Trade (Policy) Narratives in Economic Elite Discourse

Abstract: as well as the participants of the 2 nd Vienna Conference on Pluralism in Economics in April 2019 for their comments on an earlier version of this paper as well as Ernest Aigner, who has provided us with citation data.

Cited by 2 publications

References 45 publications

The Trade (Policy) Discourse in Top Economics Journals

The Trade (Policy) Discourse in Top Economics Journals

The Space of Research Topics in Economics: Scientific Position-Takings and Individual Positions in Swiss Economic Science

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