Wicked politics and trashy economics: Gender and scandalous expertise

Who gets to speak with authority about the economy? Countering problematic identity-blindness, we develop a framework for exploring how identity designates whose economic expertise is perceived as authentic and authoritative according to the intersectional exclusions of gender, race and class. These exclusionary power dynamics are key to a fuller understanding of the politics of economic expertise, shaping not only who gets to speak with authority about the economy, but also how the economy is conceptualised through models and methods that exclude the full range of economic activity from analysis and debate. We apply these insights to the case of Brexit, and the performance of economic expertise during and after the referendum campaign, focusing on two bodies – Economists for Free Trade (EFT) and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).