Economics is held together by circular journal rankings and prestige, not intellectual standards

Evidence

Beyond the graduate textbooks, the profession is held together by little more than a few journals that are designated indispensable by some rather circular bibliometric measures, and the dominance of a few highly ranked departments, rather than any clear intellectual standards. Indeed, graduates are socialized and indoctrinated by forcing them to read articles from those journals with a half-life of five years: and so the disciplinary center of gravity wanders aimlessly, without vision or intentionality. The orthodoxy, so violently quarantined and demarcated from outside pretenders, harbors a vacuum within its perimeter. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 69

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reading purpose of the neoliberal ‘thought collective’ — Mirowski elsewhere shows how this thin intellectual core lets a well-organized thought collective (Mount Pelerin network) dominate economics despite its internal emptiness. — connects to: The Nobel economics prize was created to manufacture science-like prestige, not to honor it — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 475; Patronage, not analysis, explains academic economists’ crisis positions. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 874
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 69

Broader Connections

• The Nobel economics prize was created to manufacture science-like prestige, not to honor it #corroborates (0.82) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 475
• Patronage, not analysis, explains academic economists’ crisis positions. #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 874