TY - JOUR
T1 - Managing macroeconomic neoliberalism
T2 - Capital and the resilience of the rational expectations assumption since the Great Recession
AU - Helgadóttir, Oddný
AU - Ban, Cornel
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021/1/8
Y1 - 2021/1/8
N2 - There is little systematic work on how much the core of mainstream macroeconomics has changed since the crisis of 2008 and even less on what explains patterns of stability and change. This paper addresses this gap by first, mapping out debates over the core assumption of rational expectations in high-prestige academic publications and the research of central banks of systemic importance and second, deploying a sociological perspective to assess the various forms of capital deployed by orthodox defenders, radical challengers and constructive critics of this assumption. The paper finds that although the core of modern macro has seen a more robust radical challenge than one might have expect, the defense of rational expectations remained quantitatively dominant and substantively elastic. While radical challengers had access to significant material resources and symbolic capital, orthodox players control the institutions of the economics profession via editorial boards and refereeing for the top journals. As such, the orthodox exercise a strong gatekeeping function that allows some pluralism yet also goes some way toward explaining their continued intellectual dominance.
AB - There is little systematic work on how much the core of mainstream macroeconomics has changed since the crisis of 2008 and even less on what explains patterns of stability and change. This paper addresses this gap by first, mapping out debates over the core assumption of rational expectations in high-prestige academic publications and the research of central banks of systemic importance and second, deploying a sociological perspective to assess the various forms of capital deployed by orthodox defenders, radical challengers and constructive critics of this assumption. The paper finds that although the core of modern macro has seen a more robust radical challenge than one might have expect, the defense of rational expectations remained quantitatively dominant and substantively elastic. While radical challengers had access to significant material resources and symbolic capital, orthodox players control the institutions of the economics profession via editorial boards and refereeing for the top journals. As such, the orthodox exercise a strong gatekeeping function that allows some pluralism yet also goes some way toward explaining their continued intellectual dominance.
KW - capital
KW - economic ideas
KW - economists
KW - Macroeconomics
KW - neoliberalism
KW - rational expectations
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099092077&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13563467.2020.1863344
DO - 10.1080/13563467.2020.1863344
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85099092077
SN - 1356-3467
VL - 26
SP - 869
EP - 884
JO - New Political Economy
JF - New Political Economy
IS - 5
ER -