I got my Ph.D. in economics from Princeton in 1997. Twenty-three years after graduation, I remain a professor at a mid-ranked school. The odds that I’ll ever get a job at a top-20 department look awfully low. How do I feel about this situation?
The socially approved response, at least within social science, is to feel and express deep admiration for the plainly superior researchers at top schools. I’m supposed to defer to their judgment on not only (a) which research methods are kosher, but also (b) what research topics are worthwhile. If I apply myself, perhaps I can usefully, if humbly, extend their work.
The more common responses of lower-status academics, of course, are jealousy and laziness. Jealousy, because faculty at higher-ranked schools so out-shine the rest of us. Laziness, because deep-down faculty at lower-ranked schools know they lack the skills to do real research. Most aren’t even good enough to usefully, if humbly, extend the work of their betters.
Call it sour grapes, but I don’t respond to my situation in any of these ways. With rare exceptions, I don’t admire researchers at top schools – or try to humbly build on their work. At the same time, I’m not lazy. And in all sincerity, I am not jealous.
Why not? To be blunt, I deny the value of almost all of the social science research going on at top schools. My reaction to 95% of the articles published in top economics journals isn’t so much “That’s wrong!” as “So what?” I recognize that getting accepted by these journals requires enormous intelligence, training, and effort. Unless you believe in the Labor Theory of Value, however, the cost of creating top publications implies nothing about the value of creating top publications. And in my considered judgment, the value of top publications is low. When I was in grad school, economists won big for pure – and utterly irrelevant – mathematical theory. These days, economists win big for running bullet-proof randomized controlled trials on trivial topics. Yes, there are exceptions. Phil Tetlock, Ed Glaeser, Lant Pritchett, and Richard Thaler leap to mind. Yet the rule remains: The intellectual value of top publications is low.
Does anything better exist? Definitely. What is it? The kind of research I do, of course. Plenty of scholars do what I consider “my kind of work,” but let’s focus on me. False modesty aside, I judge my work better than most of the work done by researchers at top schools. Indeed, I judge my work to be vastly superior. That’s why I do it.
How so? At minimum, books like The Myth of the Rational Voter and The Case Against Education attempt to answer social questions of great significance. Why do democracies choose bad polices? Why is there a gulf between learning and earning? I say struggling with a great question is better than definitively answering a trivial one. And since I predictably think my books actually deliver high-quality answers to these great questions, my sense of self-satisfaction with my intellectual output is through the roof.
In fact, I’d go further. Call me a megalomaniac, but in my heart of hearts I deem dozens of my blog posts to be more valuable intellectual contributions than the typical article published in top social science journals. Consider my “The Public Goods Model vs. Social Desirability Bias.” This wee article shows that the so-called tell-tale sign of public goods – people collectively voting for goods they don’t individually purchase – could just as easily reflect Social Desirability Bias. A simple point? Yes. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard another economist clearly acknowledge this observational equivalence. So what? This simple point calls into question the efficiency of many trillions of dollars of government spending all around the world. Few economists at top schools have written anything to rival this solitary blog post.
You could retort, “OK, then why aren’t you seething with jealousy?” Simple: I’m not jealous of researchers at top schools because I would hate to trade places with most of them. I would rather do what I do at George Mason than do what Harvard researchers do at Harvard. Indeed, it’s not even close. Yes, I would prefer a world where Harvard placed supreme value on my kind of work. After all, I am a chronic daydreamer. Yet long ago, I hedonically adapted to society’s wretched priorities. Instead of feeling mad at the world, I rejoice that I get paid to do the work that means the world to me.
P.S. If you have tenure at a top school, none of my negativity should depress you. Today is the first day of the rest of your career. Why not chuck conventional standards and start doing research that really matters to you and the world? If you want to chat about how to get started, just email me.
READER COMMENTS
Tiago
Dec 16 2020 at 9:37am
Great post
Liam
Dec 16 2020 at 10:48am
You’ve definitely inspired my beliefs more than any other economist on the planet.
Jon
Dec 16 2020 at 10:55am
I VALUE your contributions to society greater than any of those! Keep up the great work!
Dan Meyer
Dec 16 2020 at 11:07am
Plus, “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids” probably created a bunch of extra humans 😉
Andre
Dec 16 2020 at 11:17am
Agree.
Pete Smoot
Dec 16 2020 at 11:20am
I’ll see your Myth of the Rational Voter and raise you one Open Borders.
Pete S
Dec 16 2020 at 3:41pm
This exactly.
Also ‘The Case Against Education’.
Popular books about education have a lot of impact. Vanishingly few people read economic papers. Many people read popularisations of economics.
This includes politicians that establish ‘nudge’ units and whatnot.
Please keep writing books and blog posts and appearing on podcasts.
Very few people know or care who the top people are at top 20 universities. Considerably more people read and think about economics because, well, it affects us all.
Mark
Dec 16 2020 at 11:34am
Well done.
P.S. why does this page doesn’t have stars so we can like, rate and/or rank posts and comments like we do with products on Amazon? It would be great.
Student of Liberty
Dec 18 2020 at 4:03am
I think that Amazon and others have some sort of algorithm to leverage on the stars that you are giving for free. Without the algorithm, the star system is not that useful…
Charlie
Dec 16 2020 at 11:49am
It seems like you could get around having to caveat every other sentence by defining some heuristic that could be used to measure the relative impact of your work in comparison to that of top schools. Defining such a benefit would also have the added benefit of allowing comparison between yourself and your other peers, as a means of providing a control population.
Since you’re particularly proud of your Public Goods Model blog post, maybe a heuristic built off that? Something like public references to the concept, evidence of its thinking in governmental statements/policies pre and post publication, or something along those lines.
I think this would be a lot stronger of a strategy rhetorically.
Robert Efroymson
Dec 16 2020 at 12:07pm
By amazing coincidence, I wrote a blog post on almost exactly this subject a couple of years ago:
http://efroymson.blogspot.com/2018/10/published-academic-research-is-worthless.html
Thomas Hutcheson
Dec 16 2020 at 12:11pm
Is it TRUE this is how academics do think and think they should think?
Both look very dysfunctional to an outsider. It does not come through at least reading the abstracts of the NBER or the writings of the other economists who write on this blog.
Speed
Dec 16 2020 at 1:08pm
“Most aren’t even good enough to usefully, if humbly, extend the work of their betters.”
Nor are most good enough to usefully, if humbly, teach Introduction to Macroeconomics.
Chris DeMuth Jr
Dec 16 2020 at 4:00pm
“I deem dozens of my blog posts to be more valuable intellectual contributions than the typical article published in top social science journals”
I read both and just writing to confirm that this is 100% true.
Tom
Dec 16 2020 at 5:53pm
Kaplan aspires to be a public intellectual, making intellectual contributions for the good of the public (and the republic). Most tenure track academics follow the circle-jerk model of academic success, whereby your work is published for the reading pleasure of your immediate academic neighbors. Their goal is to please the 5-10 other academics who might influence their future promotion and grant status. To please these peers and mentors it is best to work in parallel with them, citing them early and often, heaping praise upon their work while extending it. Whether each cluster of academics is making any real contribution to intellectual public life is irrelevant. It is a self-contained environment sustained by taxpayer grant money motivated by the vast overgeneralization that funding research by smart people is bound to be good for all of us, and that the choice of the research topic is best left to the recipients. Some day there will be an accounting, but that day seems far away.
Frank
Dec 16 2020 at 7:07pm
No cap.
Felipe A.
Dec 16 2020 at 7:50pm
Bryan, and this is an honest question, isn’t your work on those books largely based on peer-reviewed articles produced by tenured or tenured-to-be professors at top schools?
Ben
Dec 16 2020 at 8:09pm
Sounds like the Econtalk episode between Roberts and Leavitt sunk in.
More seriously- would suspect that insufficiently answering big questions lowers status over someone who definitively answers some random questions. Incremental answers and definitive answers are HARD! When you interview for a job (non-academic) employers want to see you can produce results for all that work.
Saying “I picked a scab enough to generate 10 more rabbit holes in this really big problem, in fact I may barely have gotten off the starting line” is less exciting than “I solved why purple ice cream sounds green”.
Joe Mann
Dec 18 2020 at 6:25am
I’m having a hard time identifying your comment as a rebuke or as applause; seems like the former to me. Why would a more important problem be less exciting? Just scratching a more important problem’s surface, which leads to even more questions to answer is, in itself, incremental; right? You’ve established incremental is good. But are baby steps better than larger ones and steps in less meaningful directions, superior? Surely you’re not suggesting this. Or are you?
How is it that incremental answers to less important questions is exciting when there’s plenty of conventional wisdom that’s just flat-out dubious and should be explored — right now — because it’s harming people. Hell, I’ll even go so far to point out that the ‘higher status’ research is sometimes producing the conclusions leading to bad conventional wisdom. And that’s the sort of crap leading to bad public policies and wrong-headed public perceptions.
What word is more exciting to you: ‘orthodoxy’ or ‘revolutionary’? I know how I would answer that question but want to read your answer.
Lars
Dec 16 2020 at 8:40pm
My friends and I all know who you are. We’re not economists or academics, just lawyers, bankers, government bureaucrats, and other over-educated folks who talk politics and the world with each other. Granted, we refer to you using terms like “batshit insane” or “walking reductio-ad-absurdum of libertarianism” or my personal favorite “would be displayed at a human zoo if ethics had developed a bit differently” but at least we talk about you, know who you are, and discuss your ideas. I own one of your books, as do multiple of my friends. I cannot say that for a single researcher at Princeton, MIT, or most other top schools. I went to Harvard and can only name Summers and Mankiw from their econ department, and that’s not because of their academic work.
You’ve focused on addressing popular questions through accessible media in accessible language, and its paid off in terms of recognition and providing value to the general public.
Phil H
Dec 16 2020 at 9:17pm
While I have a lot of respect for BC, and the spirit in which he wrote this post, I think it’s wrong in a very serious way. I don’t think his understanding of intellectual progress is correct.
Assumption: the point of academics is to deliver intellectual progress – that is, to find out new stuff that is not obvious.
How is this done? I suggest that it happens in two ways: (1) big new ideas; and (2) painstaking reasoning about the consequences of ideas, plus empirical verification.
Both of these parts look useless on the surface. Big new ideas, when they arrive, always look weird. That’s kinda the point. It’s rare that they’re appreciated immediately; and in fact their power only becomes apparent after some of the painstaking work has been done, and they prove to be effective in many different areas. Painstaking application of ideas always looks a bit trivial. It’s not creative, and at best it verifies the correctness of an existing idea. Nevertheless, it’s vital, because without massive empirical testing, we simply can’t know if the ideas are any good.
Now, neither of the parts that I’ve outlined involve public engagement, and that’s something BC’s books do. But I see that as a very secondary part of the role of academics. There’s a reason we shut them away in an ivory tower – they need to be slightly disconnected from mundane reality.
So I don’t accept BC’s dismissal of the work of all those top-flight researchers. I think they are doing both legs of creative intellectual work – much more of (2) than of (1), of course, and rightly so.
BC’s work is great, and if it’s part of the inspiration behind new educational ventures like Google’s certification program, then that’s definitely evidence of real-world impact. But that’s not the only way to measure the quality of a researcher’s work.
Phil H
Dec 16 2020 at 9:40pm
That linked paper by Pritchett is a great example of what I’m talking about. He excoriates Bill Gates and Blattman for “madness” because they want to know whether chickens are better than cash transfers. He says the leaders of poor countries have many more pressing problems.
But this is why researchers should stay in their towers away from the pressing problems. However big the problems are, the thing that researchers need to do is work out what will solve them. And the fact is that we don’t know whether you can help a country to develop by giving it money, or whether you have to give it resources and let it develop itself. That’s a massive and embarrassing hole in the knowledge of development economists. And the only way to fill that hole is to do the empirical work. Apparently trivial, chicken-related empirical work.
The desire to think big and seek impact is great. But the dirty legwork has to get done.
suddyan
Dec 18 2020 at 6:52am
[And the fact is that we don’t know whether you can help a country to develop by giving it money, or whether you have to give it resources and let it develop itself.]
A “country” does not develop.
People living largely by historical chance in some “country” do things that may or may not end up in what appears to be a “country developing.”
What those people “do” as individuals and in civil society (NOT government) is much, much more driven by need, culture, social psychology, tradition, and the like than “giving [the country] money or resources.”
Actually, the mere “giving” tends to advance a psychological behaviour of wanting to do less and rather sit back and receiving more – and is therefore detrimental to a “country developing.”
I therefore regard the above quoted question as relatively worthless. Yet reams and reams of “academic research” and political pontification and social virtue-signaling opinion pieces and exhortations are expended on that question.
Any “academic research” to “answer” that question – too often with intricate, mathematical models or piles and piles of empirical data – is, in my view, bordering on an utmost waste of time. But there is much of highbrow economics for you!
drethelin
Dec 16 2020 at 10:22pm
I’m very curious how you square this perspective on social science research being worthless with your strong stance on open borders being net-beneficial to America, given that all the evidence I’ve seen presented for that point of view is the exact same social science.
Milton Kiang
Dec 16 2020 at 11:20pm
Excellent article bryan. This ought to inspire other academics to do meaningful work.
Ultimate Philosopher
Dec 17 2020 at 12:13am
Somehow I relate. No other philosopher around has produced anything remotely like my book or blog.
If those in the ethics profession actually wanted to score way high on doing good and right, they’d be promoting Philosophy for Children (P4C – https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/children) up the wazoo. But they have other priorities, apparently.
Brian Coffey
Dec 17 2020 at 12:17am
I appreciate the sentiment here. Do research that people care about. Great thoughts. I respectfully point out that some agricultural economists have written/published on the on the vote-buy gap: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1093/aepp/ppy002
A couple of the authors on that article also have other articles on the topic. This isn’t to detract from your post or points, just fyi.
Charles Dinerstein
Dec 17 2020 at 5:56am
This is not just a problem in economics. Take a look at medical research, which more and more consists of data-mining registries or meta-analysis of concepts and findings that I was taught to be true or false when I trained 30 years ago. There is also something to be said for the reach of blogs or articles in Aeon or The Conversation, where a researcher can share ideas with a far larger audience than their work would find solely in a journal.
Philip George
Dec 17 2020 at 6:21am
Remember Marx’s qualification: socially nevessary labor.
Kevin M
Dec 17 2020 at 8:01am
I’m a freelance journalist and I feel the same way. I get to write about whatever I want, every day. Sometimes for little-known publications, and often enough for the prestigious ones that make people’s ears perk up when they hear the name. But I too would hate to have a full-time job there, where reporters are “assigned” stories or beats. Occasionally there would be overlap between the assignment and the topics that I’m interested in, but frequently (usually?) there would not be. And that would be a nightmare, spending a whole day or a whole month on some ostensibly worthy topic that I secretly find meaningless and trivial. Of course I realize that staffers at those storied outlets enjoy higher status and and more prestige, and probably (but not necessarily) higher earnings as well. But to me, the freedom I have to research and write about only those things that get my brain all fired up is immeasurably more important.
Bob A.
Dec 17 2020 at 10:04am
Well-said Critical, but polite. Challenging, but not arrogant. Provocative, but not sensationalistic. Thank you.
Alex Henning
Dec 17 2020 at 2:22pm
Get em Bryan! Intellectually manhandle academia into giving us better value for the immense amount of money and status we shower them with.
S
Dec 17 2020 at 10:33pm
You want more evidence of your impact? My wife and I decided to have kid #2 based in no small measure on the logic and evidence in SELFISH REASONS TO HAVE MORE KIDS.
How many Ivy League economists can boast anything close to that?
Jose Pablo
Dec 17 2020 at 10:44pm
Excellent post Bryan.
Even the titles of your books are more worthy that a significant percentage of papers and articles about difference in differences econometric analysis on totally irrelevant stuff
Philip George
Dec 18 2020 at 7:30am
I will now shew thee how thou mayst get published in the top ten journals.
First, thou shalt have a mathematical model. It hath been conveyed to me on good authority that on the gateway to the top ten journals there hangeth a sign that reads: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here without a mathematical model. This then shall be thy first and last commandment: Have thee a mathematical model and all the rest shall be added unto you.
It hath been wrongly said that the new classicals have no interest in reality. Many stones have thus been cast at them. To prove them wrong thou shalt have real people in thy models. They may be infinitely lived. Or they may be born at the left end, grow old and exit at the right end. The young shall work and the old shall buy off them the fruits of their labour. Or they may be identical representative agents. Thy people may live anywhere. But islands are best.
Ye have heard it said of old that the labourer is worthy of his hire. For a mathematically challenged age that was indeed a keen observation. But thou shalt translate it into mathematical symbols and say that the wage is the marginal product of labour. It hath the sound of profundity and, besides, is one word longer.
Ye have heard it said that the love of money is the root of all evil. But thou must needs have money in thy model. It can be paid in advance or showered from the sky, like manna of old. It can be earned by the young to be spent in their dotage. But on no condition must it be put into bottles and cast into pits to be dug up. If thou so doest thou shalt burn in new classical hell.
If thy model hast no utility maximization all that has been said before is so much dross. Thy output must also be continuously differentiable.
It hath been said that man proposes, but God disposes. And so it is today also. Thou mayest construct excellent models, but it is the computer that disposes of the regression. It may be that thou arrive at no maximum or minimum, either local or global. Thy models may misbehave. The models may then be tweaked to yield the conclusions thou hadst in thy mind from the beginning.
Profound reasons must be put forth: “There remains, nevertheless, an inevitable arbitrariness in our selection of these functions”; “While we offer no crucial test of the two views”; “This assumption is not inconsistent with observed fluctuations”.
These have been selected from the masters. Thou shalt study the masters.
A few additional tips may stand thee in good stead. Let thy equations be homogeneous of degree zero. A hessian is good but a bordered hessian is better. Throw in a Lagrangian multiplier, or even two. But be judicious in their use. Last but not least, your entry into the hallowed precincts will be eased by generous use of general equilibrium. Even better, thy models may yield multiple equilibria. That will convince them that thy PhD hath not been in vain.
John McGurk
Dec 18 2020 at 8:25am
Bryan
You are one of my favourite economists and not just that but a uniquely provocative public policy voice. Having just finished a Behavioural Science Masters, being told to worship the narcissism of small differences in means, about stuff which is essentially of little consequence, i appreciate your boldness. I have read the case and your migration book. All have made me think and even think differently . Keep on keeping on!
John
Doug Anderson
Dec 18 2020 at 11:32am
I loved this post.
Alex
Dec 18 2020 at 6:12pm
Great post!
Jose Pablo
Dec 18 2020 at 10:54pm
Mankiw had, back in 2006, a very interesting essay on the difference between the “science of macroeconomics” and the “engineering of macroeconomics”.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mankiw/files/macroeconomist_as_scientist.pdf
And one can only concluded that the “engineering of macroeconomics” is in dire straits nowadays:
* we have no clue about the limits or the consequences of the unprecedented expansionary monetary policy of today. And, even worse, we prescribed a high dose of austerity to southern Europe back in 2008-11 that we know now was completely unnecessary (do you remember This Time is Different?).
* we have (or used to have) a macroeconomist (of a sort of) as “chief macro-engineer” that is very much in favor of trade barriers.
* If you listen what Krugman and Cochrane (to pick just two, or Piketty and Mankiw or …) have to say on several topics (minimum wage, optimal taxation … you name it!), the equivalent in physics would not be the practitioners on this field discussing the magnitude of the gravitational acceleration … they would be discussing whether it acts downwards or upwards.
This is not all, very likely, the “macro-scientist” fault. But is very difficult to believe they are completely innocent on this disaster. Maybe due to some of the reasons Bryan hints or explains here.
Walter Sobchak
Dec 26 2020 at 7:29pm
XXVII.
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald
Les Holcomb
Dec 21 2020 at 8:47am
Keep on truckin’ bro!!
D
Dec 23 2020 at 9:20am
Clever man productively answering the big questions, or a mixture of arrogance and ideology best ignored?
Genuine question.
Comments are closed.