>LF and DH wrote:
>
>>As a field, economics has become increasingly hostile
>>to unorthodox opinion in recent years, and virtually no
>>seriously left-of-center economist has been hired by a
>>major department in more than two decades.
>
>So what's the reason for the dearth of hirings? Is it simply blacklisting?
>Or is there a shrinking pool, both quantitatively and qualitatively, of
>left-leaning people who study economics at the academy (have they all
>migrated to cultural studies, or started newsletters?)? Or is it a little
>of both?
It's a combination of things, I think. Progressive students often run away screaming from economics, because it is such a stultifying field. Those who survive to the PhD level often shun academic jobs for unions and think tanks, because to thrive as an economist it helps to be isolated and irrelevant. And colleges and universities won't hire radical economists, either. Bhagwati blamed the mediocrity of most leftie candidates for this dearth (along with the corporate bias explanation we quoted in the article).
Maybe some of the employed, or hope-to-be-employed, radical economists on the list could enlighten.
Doug