You've invited argument by pressing a lot of buttons, but of course that's why we're here. This idea of econ depts as the bastion of disinterested science strains credulity, which is not say that much of use is not produced in such places.
The research centers you disparage draw their personnel and prestige from your neo-classical centers of analytical excellence (CAE), so to speak. People seem to move back and forth between them without difficulty.
Prof Gary Becker, doyenne of a CAE, said of tax cut proposals that such cuts would surely stimulate saving and work effort, and that such a prediction was "economics 101."
Prof Feldstein, another CAE champion, seems to be making a career of writing empirical papers that get demolished by government economists. He didn't have the advantage of Prof Boskin's famous irreproducible result, published in a referreed CAE journal, on the interest elasticity of saving. Then there is Robert Barro, author of many embarrassing columns in the WSJ, who was evidently offered record compensation by a CAE.
Within CAE's of course, analytical disagreements on fairly basic matters proliferate, which cuts against the grain of your point about standards.
Two questions: do you find the AER interesting?; and, why is Lance Taylor at the New School, rather than a CAE?
I would concede that CAE output averages a higher level of rigor (with significant variance), but rigor is often confused with ideology (with unfair implications for individuals' professional interests) or policy-irrelevance. Rigor in the interests of replacing established theories is often not welcome, as a young visiting prof from a CAE at the U of Md. complained to me some years ago.
Line overheard at recent AEA meetings: "He's hasn't done anything for months. He's not doing anything. He's doing . . . policy."
CAE poop smells much the same as everyone else's. If you didn't suspect as much (it's not all that great a concession), I don't think you'd be here.
Regards,
MBS