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On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Patrick Gunning wrote: 
 
>         I remember a conversation between two profs when I first 
> enrolled in a masters' of economics program about 25 years ago. They had 
> what they regarded as a highly abstract and complete discussion of some 
> economic issue without ever stating an idea. The first would mention one 
> economist's name; the second would counter with the name of a different 
> economist. And then the first would counter with still a different 
> name. And so it went. My fellow students regarded this as evidence of 
> their brilliance.  But I was led to wonder: Are they really 
> communicating in a way that they may learn something? Or are they 
> merely producing a ritualistic chant. 
 
One of the ironies of this revolutionary movement was that it was 
undertaken in the belief that these newly fashioned tools would sharpen 
economics and discriminate between the true and the false model (as 
opposed to competition between the true and false prophet in less 
technocratic times).   
 
But the econometrics revolution, for example, has apparently created a 
technocratic hierarchy - with many researchers, I sense, feeling divided 
by a status division:  
 
the Premier division (a tiny elite of econometricians who have made a 
very significant contribution to statistical theory and are recognised as 
such by non-economic statisticians);  
 
the First division (researchers who publish in the leading journals);  
 
the Second division (researchers who are not on top of the econometric 
techniques they are using and appear to have a cynical and manipulative 
approach to these techniques, but who occasionally manage to get their 
material published);  
 
the Lower division (about whom little need be said).    
 
At a recent conference, full of papers illustrated with econometric 
results, one Premier division econometrician told me that he hadn't seen 
a single paper that even qualified for the title "econometrics".  Second 
division econometricians often have an alarmingly deferential attitude to 
the big names: repeating one of these names is all that is required to 
justify your estimating technique. 
 
With this hierarchical structure of (downward) knowledge dissemination it 
is hardly surprising that Samuelson perceived the quality and quantity of 
Cambridge MA economics was "second to none"; and that the average quality 
of economists in the 'provinces', he perceived, was declining.  
------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Robert Leeson 
Bradley Fellow and Visiting Associate Professor 
Economics Department  
Social Science Centre 
The University of Western Ontario 
London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5C2 
 
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