Career incentives lock economists into intellectually indefensible models they know are wrong

Evidence

There was this young economist, I think he was at UCLA, who wrote to me when I published this paper called “Whom or What Does the Representative Agent Represent?” (Kirman, 1992). He said: Dear professor, I really agree with what you said. I think it is intellectually absolutely right. Unfortunately, I am a young macroeconomist who is an assistant professor. I build models based on a representative agent. I know how to do that, and I know how to publish that. And I need to get tenure. Once I have got tenure, maybe I will then be able to turn around and start to think about the sorts of models that do not use the representative agent, but unfortunately, what I think will happen is that by then I will have got into the habit of doing it. I will publish my articles, get a decent reputation, I will get a promotion, and I will probably never think about this again. But anyway, thank you very much for the insight! — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 792

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on perverse academic incentive structures and how orthodoxy reproduces itself — resonates with the reviewer’s knowledge of thought-collective dynamics and institutional reproduction of paradigms. — connects to: The economist career conveyor belt into finance undermined the pretense of independent expertise — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 581; Neoclassical training immunized economists against even recognizing financial conflicts of interest — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 591; Economists’ persistence in error needs institutional explanation, not just psychology — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 490 (+5 more)
• SEED: The candid tenure-confessional letter suggests an essay angle: how explicit, self-aware complicity — economists who know the model is wrong and say so privately — is the real mechanism sustaining the thought collective, sharper than out-and-out denial.

Broader Connections

• Economists’ persistence in error needs institutional explanation, not just psychology #expands (0.82) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 490
• Behavioral economics gets coopted to excuse rather than reform orthodox theory #qualifies (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 745
• Economic ideas can blind policymakers to the flaws of their institutional designs #corroborates (0.72) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 252
• Economic theories serve as blueprints for institutions, and faulty theories produce fragile ones #expands (0.72) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 120