The Fed employs 43 percent of US monetary economics specialists

Evidence

In 1992, testimony provided directly by the Fed listed at least 493 economists employed as “officers, economists and statisticians” and an additional 237 as “support staff.” Since about 1,700 members of the American Economics Association listed “monetary and financial theory” as their primary or secondary fields in that year, the Fed was currently employing something like 43 percent of the field. White estimates that there are about 390 economists specializing in money, macro, or banking in the “top 50” graduate departments in the United States; so the Fed could easily have employed that totality, or engaged them in some consulting relationship over the course of their careers. White also reports that over a five-year horizon 80 percent of the papers in the Journal of Monetary Economics had at least one co-author with a Fed affiliation (not all disclosed in the article, however), whereas in the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking it was 75 percent. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 525

Categorization

• QUESTION: What would the equivalent percentage look like today, and does the Fed still decline to report totals? Worth chasing current numbers.
• SHARE: Send to an academic economist friend — the 80 percent co-authored-with-Fed rate in the JME is a stark statistic that surprises even insiders.
• XREF: connects to: The Federal Reserve dominates economics as a funder and employer — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 528

Broader Connections

• The Federal Reserve dominates economics as a funder and employer #exemplifies (0.90) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 528