Finance was institutionally relegated to business schools and dismissed by academic economists as unscientific

Evidence

Economics departments were usually in the prestigious faculties of arts and sciences, while finance was often seen as an appropriate topic for universities’ vocationally oriented business schools, which were gaining academic status only slowly. The older descriptive, institutional, “unscientific” approach taken in those business schools to the study of finance may have left its mark on economists’ attitudes. The economist Stephen Ross, who began research in finance while an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania at the start of the 1970s, recalls being warned that “finance is to economics as osteopathy is to medicine” (Ross interview). — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 319

Categorization

• QUESTION: The osteopathy-to-medicine dismissal raises the question of when and how this status hierarchy inverted — a useful thread for the financialization-of-economics story.
• XREF: connects to: Mainstream economists once dismissed finance theory as marginal and trivial — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 34; Finance was long deemed unworthy of serious academic mathematics. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 266; Practitioners resisted finance theory partly because they felt academically ridiculed — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 355 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern financial economics took root in business schools rather than economics departments #expands (0.92) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 320
• Practitioners resisted finance theory partly because they felt academically ridiculed #corroborates (0.85) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 355
• The new finance theory displaced managerial finance from business school curricula #corroborates (0.70) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 313