Power And Influence Of Economists

Economists occupy leading positions in many different sectors including central and private banks, multinational corporations, the state and the media, as well as serving as policy consultants on everything from health to the environment and security. Power and Influence of Economists explores the interconnected relationship between power, knowledge and influence which has led economics to be both a source and beneficiary of widespread power and influence. The contributors to this book explore the complex and diverse methods and channels that economists have used to exert and expand their influence from different disciplinary and national perspectives. Four different analytical views on the role of power and economics are taken: first, the role of economic expert discourses as power devices for the formation of influential expertise; second, the logics and modalities of governmentality that produce power/knowledge apparatuses between science and society; third, economists as involved in networks between academia, politics and the media; and forth, economics considered as a social field, including questions of legitimacy and unequal relations between economists based on the detention of various capitals. The volume includes case studies on a variety of national configurations of economics, such as the US, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Mexico and Brazil, as well as international spaces and organisations such as the IMF. This book provides innovative research perspectives for students and scholars of heterodox economics, cultural political economy, sociology of professions, network studies, and the social studies of power, discourse and knowledge. “The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9780367817084, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.”

"Economists occupy leading positions in many different sectors including central and private banks, multinational corporations, the state and the media, as well as serving as policy consultants on everything from health to the environment and security. Power and Influence of Economists explores the interconnected relationship between power, knowledge and influence which has led economics to be both a source and beneficiary of widespread power and influence. The contributors to this book explore the complex and diverse methods and channels that economists have used to exert and expand their influence from different disciplinary and national perspectives. Four different analytical views on the role of power and economics are taken: first, the role of economic expert discourses as power devices for the formation of influential expertise; second, the logics and modalities of governmentality that produce power/knowledge apparatuses between science and society; third, economists as involved in networks between academia, politics and the media; and forth, economics considered as a social field, including questions of legitimacy and unequal relations between economists based on the detention of various capitals. The volume includes case studies on a variety of national configurations of economics, such as the US, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Mexico and Brazil, as well as international spaces and organisations such as the IMF. This book provides innovative research perspectives for students and scholars of heterodox economics, cultural political economy, sociology of professions, network studies, and the social studies of power, discourse and knowledge. Jens Maesse is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Giessen, Germany. Stephan Pühringer is Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy (ICAE) at the University of Linz, Austria, and Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics at the Cusanus University of Bernkastel-Kues, Germany. Thierry Rossier is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Pierre Benz is Postdoctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland of Lausanne (HETSL | HES-SO), Switzerland"--

The spread of market-oriented reforms has been one of the major political and economic trends of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Governments have, to varying degrees, adopted policies that have led to deregulation: the liberalization of trade; the privatization of state entities; and low-rate, broad-base taxes. Yet some countries embraced these policies more than others. Johan Christensen examines one major contributor to this disparity: the entrenchment of U.S.-trained, neoclassical economists in political institutions the world over. While previous studies have highlighted the role of political parties and production regimes, Christensen uses comparative case studies of New Zealand, Ireland, Norway, and Denmark to show how the influence of economists affected the extent to which each nation adopted market-oriented tax policies. He finds that, in countries where economic experts held powerful positions, neoclassical economics broke through with greater force. Drawing on revealing interviews with 80 policy elites, he examines the specific ways in which economists shaped reforms, relying on an activist approach to policymaking and the perceived utility of their science to drive change.

Introduction -- The economics of the powerful -- Money is power -- The power of the corporate elite -- Market power -- Power at work -- The power to set the rules of the game -- Afterword -- References.

This book identifies sources of power that help business and economic elites influence policy decisions.

A situation in economics that is little short of scandalous is the almost total neglect by mainstream economics of the importance of power in economic affairs. Power in this context means the ability to bend market forces in one's favor, influencing and shaping key economic variables such as prices, wages, and other income determinants. As John Kenneth Galbraith as tutely observes: a dominant fact in economic life is the desire of people everywhere and in all circumstances to get control over their personal lives and their incomes-to escape from the "tyranny of the market. " Power is the means to this end. Ever since Adam Smith, economists have been fascinated by and lavish in their praise for the workings of the market. All modern textbooks are built around Smithian ideas about markets and the way the "invisible hand" works through competition for society's better ment. Yet one can search nearly in vain through leading texts, under graduate and graduate alike, for any reference to market or economic power. This is the situation in spite of the fact that the drive for power, the urge to get control over one's income, permeates the economy as much as does competition. This is a scandal! For a discipline that claims for itself the mantle of a science-one which wants to be accorded the same respect given the natural sciences-it is almost incomprehensible that it should ignore a major force at work in the real economic world.

Since the financial crisis of 2008 and the following Great Recession, there has been surprisingly little change in the systems of ideas, institutions and policies which preceded the crash and helped bring it about. 'Mainstream' economics carries on much as it did before. Despite much discussion of what went wrong, very little has substantially changed. Perhaps the answer has something to do with power; a subject on which economics is unusually quiet. Whilst economics may be able to discuss bargaining power and market power, it fails to explore the reciprocal connections between economic ideas and politics: the political power of economic ideas on the one side, and the influence of power structures on economic thought on the other. This book explores how the supposedly neutral discipline of economics does not simply describe human behaviour, but in fact shapes it.

Perhaps America's first celebrated economist, Irving Fisher-for whom the Fisher equation, the Fisher hypothesis, and the Fisher separation theorem are named-staked an early claim to fame with his revival, in this 1912 book, of the "quantity theory of money." An important work of 20th-century economics, this work explores: the circulation of money against goods the various circulating media the mystery of circulating credit how a rise in prices generates a further rise influence of foreign trade on the quantity of money the problem of monetary reform and much more. American economist IRVING FISHER (1867-1947) was professor of political economy at Yale University. Among his many books are Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices (1892), The Rate of Interest (1907), Why Is the Dollar Shrinking? A Study in the High Cost of Living (1914), and Booms and Depressions (1932).