Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

The towers — boasting grand conference hotels with grand entrances — loom large amidst the urban wasteland of the American metropolis. At street level, people pour out of taxis. The queues to register for the conference lengthen. Lobbies and lounges quickly congest. The guest count exceeds six thousand, all of them economists. Six thousand economists in one place make for a lot of noise, most of it emanating from small and huddled groups. Now and then two people greet each other loudly, enthusiastically. Many stand alone, looking pensive or intimidated — or are they just alone? The talk — heavy now in bars and lounges — fades out long before the next morning when the proceedings start. Sessions take place in small meeting rooms and large ballrooms. People hurry through hallways and outrun escalators. At the elevators, well-dressed (younger) men and women anxiously await the next carriage. They are en route to their interviews in the suites occupied by representatives of universities, colleges or international organizations looking for new colleagues. In a large hall publishers display their wares. Welcome to the world of economists.

When so viewed, their world must seem somewhat odd. What are they all doing so far away from home, clustered together in a few large hotels? The interviewing of job candidates makes sense. It is, after all, efficient to have all employers and applicants in one place, something that resembles a real market with buyers and sellers — and what we expect from economists. The publishers' displays make sense as well, since they are making money from the economists. But what to make of the conference proceedings? Outsiders will wonder what is going on. The sessions usually have only a few people in attendance. The majority of participants are presenters of papers, their discussants and a chair. One presenter after another holds a monologue followed by a monologue by one of the discussants. Maybe a few people will have questions. Most are stilted affairs. What is the point, the outsider will ask? Who is getting anything out of these somewhat autistic exchanges? The proceedings in the large ballrooms are no different except for having more people in the audience. The livelier, more animated conversations in the corridors and lobbies are usually not about economics or the economy. Talk about the Fed's latest move, the grand government deficits, the imminent financial crisis or the enduring poverty gap is rare. It is rather gossip and chatter. "[The former Chicago star] is where? And did what?" Economists apparently prefer to talk about each other and themselves.

Later in the afternoon the hotel suites and smaller ballrooms fill up with people for some reception or another. Economic departments throw them for alumni; publishers to court authors. The refreshments are quite nice. In the evening, the nearby restaurants and cafés fill up with groups of less than flashy-looking people. They are, after all, economists, some still bearing their conference badges. At night they sleep as economists do. (Economists do not make a very exuberant, creative, musical or, for that matter, erotic crowd.)

Journalists in search of a story are at a loss. Little of what is being discussed in the sessions bears on actual and real-world topics. Economists now talk mostly mathematics (so it seems) — hardly compelling story matter. The journalists, then, are left to write about that — the aloofness of economists, the sorry state of economics, the lack of answers to the provocative questions of the day.

The adventurous will stumble into sessions of alternative groups. Here are the feminist economists; there, the economic methodologists. They will come across the institutionalists, the Christian economics group, the cultural economists, the evolutionary economists, the Austrian economists, the urban economists, the statisticians, the development economists, the financial economists, the Marxists, the post-Keynesians, rhetorical economists, and so on. All appear to form worlds in and of themselves. Outsiders will have difficulties grasping that they are all of one academic field. Hearing all the different voices, they also will wonder who is telling the truth. These are, after all, self-proclaimed scientists. So what about the truth? Or do all these economists tell different versions of it? Someone, please, explain what to make of all this.

I am writing this book to make sense of economists and their world. To show that such a conference is really what economics is about. Yes, it is about the chatter as much as it is about the models, the math, the econometrics, the theories and the ideas that come from the enormous aggregate of literature that economists generate. Knowing about economics requires the bookwork and the mingling with economists.

This book is the result of my finding out what it is that economists do, what makes the science of economics tick. The main point: Think of economics in terms of a conversation, or better yet, a bunch of conversations. That may seem odd but will be much less so after you have read a little further. Things — lots of things — will logically follow (and change) if you start from this main point — like the importance of academic culture, rhetoric, the getting and giving of attention, the subsidiary role of truth as a criterion, the changes of the conversation over time, and the divergences within (and the gap between) what academics do and say and what people do and say in their everyday lives. It all is going to make sense.

I have written with all kinds of people in mind, such as:

Students of economics

I started this book when I began teaching a thousand or so first-year economics students at the University of Maastricht about the science of economics. I wanted to show you students what it takes to get into the conversation of economists. It is not enough to do the problem sets, to get good grades and be on good terms with the teacher. A great deal more is at stake. Even if you decide that the conversation of economists is not yours, you will have learned something about what it takes to get into the conversation of your choosing.

Practicing economists

Since you are a teacher, researcher or policy advisor, you are already in the conversation. You undoubtedly know a great deal about it, probably more than I. But my impression is that not all of you make the effort to seriously reflect on your world. You may, without giving it much thought, "hear voices in the air and distill their frenzy from some [methodological] scribbler a few years back" — in which case I am in for a serious challenge. You may be attached to a different picture of our world, believe that what you do is serious science and get irritated with an equation-less, model-barren book like this. You may even say that this is not economics, not science (surely) and I am therefore not your colleague.

But even as I wonder whether we have much to say to each other, I wish you would consider the argument, whether it somehow makes sense. You may identify with some of the descriptions of your world and find others at odds with your own experiences. You must agree that it takes a great deal to get into the conversation as well as continuous effort to stay in it, be noticed and get appreciation for hard work. If you wonder where you stand in the world of economists, let me pose a personal question: Whose applause you are seeking?

The answer will be revealing. You read more about the implications in the following pages.

Well-known economists

You are one of a small group who work for a reputable university, get cited a lot, and travel the world to attend conferences. You are in the thick of the conversation. I have talked with some of you in the course of my career — see for the record the Conversations with Economists (1983), the interviews in the Journal of Economic Perspectives and some videos. Most of you have outspoken opinions on what the science of economics is all about, but, truth be told, they are not as fleshed out and developed as the opinions that you hold on theorizing and modeling the economy. I hope you are not offended by this. It is also in conversation with you that I have developed this perspective on your science. Consider this an invitation to continue, and possibly alter, in a modest way, the conversations.

Methodologists and philosophers of science

I have had you on my mind all the time. After all, I have been quite involved in your conversation. With some of you I appear to have a major disagreement about the best way to depict and characterize the science of economics. Please consider the following as an attempt to further the argumentation. It is a plea to look beyond the propositions of the science and consider the conversations as such (or discursive practices, if you prefer). Please accept this as an exercise in what Alan Janik calls practical philosophy, that is, an attempt to see how economists cope with the complex world of science. Uskali, I already grant you that this argument betrays a realist stance but it wants to be more than that, as I hope you, too, will able to see. And Mark, pointing at the prominent importance of attention does not necessarily imply that it is foremost on my mind.

I would not mind having your attention though.

Fellow rhetoricians, discursive analysts and practical philosophers. This book is obviously meant to be in conversation with you. Need I say more?

Austrians, institutionalists, (pomo) Marxists, feminists and other heterodoxists

You all will benefit, I think, from the idea that economics is made up of a bunch of conversations. I know you will wish I had been more critical of orthodox economics and more supportive of your approaches, that I should have been more explicit about how power works in the profession and gender influences the practice. Please add such arguments. As to the critical edge of this book, maybe my age makes me less willing to be critical in a negative sense. This is meant as a constructive proposal and is as such quite critical, at least so I think.

Future generations of economists and philosophers. I am seriously considering the possibility that this book will be a dud, that few economists of this generation will pay it serious attention. The reason could be that it calls for a change of metaphor in the conversation about economics and people do not make such a change easily. So my hope is vested on the coming generations of economists who are less wedded to one metaphor or another and are willing therefore to entertain a metaphor that really makes sense of what they are getting involved in. Who knows, the current students may already be receptive.

Other academics

The walls that separate the disciplines continue to be thick, all the buzz about interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary work notwithstanding. If it is not our interests and our subjects that separate us, it is that we are in quite different conversations, at least that is what this book points out. Many of those who have read drafts of the book's chapters pointed out that a similar analysis would apply to other disciplines like your own. They may well be right. The reason I focused so much on the conversations of economists is that I know those better than any other. I would be very pleased, of course, if this does not prevent us from having a sensible conversation about science and academia. Might it be that this way of looking at our worlds stimulates other priorities? Does it make us realize that multi- and inter-disciplinary work only amounts to anything if it leads to sustainable conversations?

You guessed my answers. What are yours?

Journalists

I have talked with quite a few of you and know what frustrations you often experience when you are trying to get a story out of what economists are doing and to explain their ideas in layman's terms. I have learned from your experiences and observations and hope that you recognize them in the following account. Who knows, it all may make a little more sense.

Interested outsiders. You are the non-economists who professionally or not are interested in what economists are doing but do not desire to be part of their conversation. You may be an editor of economics books, a manager, a politician in need of economic advice, or just someone interested in economics. Parts of this book are not meant for you as they are about what it takes to get into and stay in the conversation of economists — that you are not interested in. But the overall message is intended to help you to make sense of what it is economists are doing and why the science that seems to be so strange at first, so contrary to what you would expect, is not so strange after all — if you use the proper metaphor to make sense of it. It also will clarify why you may easily feel excluded and not taken seriously by insiders. It is not because economists are necessarily arrogant or exclusionary (although they can be); the nature of their conversations, as you will find out, is the problem.

Involved by circumstance. You are not particularly interested in economics or its practitioners. This book has little to offer you. But suppose you are married to, or befriended by, an economist. You may come to understand that he or she is less weird than what you observe, or understand why your partner or friend is often so preoccupied and worries so much about faculty standing or the profession at large. You may be able to appreciate him or her better for learning that it is a tough world. And here is another reason: ever been made to feel stupid in the presence of economists for knowing so little about the economy? Or thought that economists are stupid with their theories that neither predict nor have concrete results? Read on — especially chapter 8 — and you will realize that no one here is stupid. You and they just live in different worlds or, better, are in different conversations.

The author

The protocol of the conversation is that we exclude ourselves from the proceedings. Science is about the world out there, and not about us. This book will show that much of what economists do is indeed about themselves and that that is neither strange nor bad. In order to be in a scientific conversation you'd better have the right passions and those you will not have if you do not involve yourself, your own story, in some way or another. Accordingly, a great deal of this book involves me. I have not tried to exclude myself from the story. The point is not to tell you so much about myself but rather to stimulate you, the reader to figure out where and how you fit in.

Do I qualify as an economist? The question pops up now and then: "Are you an economist really?" I am in the sense that I have a Ph.D. in economics, occupy the chair of cultural economics, write on the cultural dimensions of economies, and do now and then comment on economic affairs via the various news media. But I am not an economist who talks in terms of models, games, complex systems and the like. I have in the past and am well trained, for example, in econometrics. I'd say that I am not in those conversations. Economics is rich, though, and comprises a bunch of conversations; in some I feel quite at home. So, yes, I consider myself an economist, even if here I am writing about economists.

The book is personal. (Show me one that is not.) I had to write it. I carried it in me for more than twenty years. It is about time I put my thoughts down on paper. Even if no one pays any attention to them, the book has satisfied my hunger to make sense of the world I am part of.

BEING CONVERSATIONAL

The style is — what shall I say? — conversational. One reason I try to write simply is to make as much sense as possible. Another is that it underscores the message that economics is a conversation, or better, a bunch of conversations. We are actually in conversation with each other, no matter how we write. Even so, this style is somewhat unusual — non-academic, some would complain. Then again, Plato reported about the thinking of Socrates in the form of dialogues, and Lakatos did something similar in his Proofs and Refutations (1976). They pushed the conversational style further than I do here.

The conversational style is also an attempt to draw you in. Even though a book like this makes sense only if you are willing to step away from the daily practice of economics, I suggest we do not distance ourselves too much. I prefer to be as close as possible to the lifeworld of economists, as hermeneutics would put it, that is, the world as you experience it. I hope it works better than the systematic accounts found in so much methodological writing.

Once you become aware of the conversational character of your lifeworld you may begin to look differently at other things in other worlds, like things economically. That is usually what happens when you switch the metaphor. If you ask what follows — the inevitable question when you are partially seduced — the clue lies within. But before getting to that, let us see what evolves in the subsequent pages. We start with the motivational part, with everything that makes economics appear strange, if not weird. After that you will have to read on. At least, so I hope.