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What I’m learning (or remembering) today is NOT to worry about breaking things if you want real change when you are left with no solution My #EconTwitter "reputation" took off when I tweeted about how people from lesser known places like me basically don’t exist in our field 1/Permalink
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This thread blew up massively, and resonated in ways you have no ideas it has 2/Permalink
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But since then, I have to admit I’ve been complacent with myself I spent too much time managing my Twitter reputation, and too little time paying attention to the real problems faced by our profession 3/Permalink
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I have SO MANY TWEETS I never published because I was afraid it might make X or Y uncomfortable in some ways And I now realize that more often than it should have, those X or Y are almost exclusively people from fancy places How ironic isn’t it? 4/Permalink
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I hold absolutely no grudge against anybody in those places They tenured profs worked hard and they deserve to be successful and to enjoy the rewards of their work 5/Permalink
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But it was @itsafronomics who had the courage to speak up about the silence of our profession on racial injustice in the US I was the one, a literal nobody from nowhere, who speak up against the fundamental imbalances between top and non-top departments in our field 6/Permalink
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Alice Wu, an undergraduate student, was the one pointing out the toxicity of this dumpster called EJMR And this list is by no mean exhaustive So I’m asking this question: why does it fall on students to bear the risks of speaking up publicly about what’s wrong in our field? 7/Permalink
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I KNOW my professional reputation suffered when my thread blew up I KNOW this very thread will damage it even more I get it, troublemakers, they itch, they make people uncomfortable But what happens if troublemakers don’t open their fucking mouth? NOTHING! 8/Permalink
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And with this thread, I want to address a very specific issue: the complete failure of leadership by the so-called "elite economists" who dominate the field Econ is hierarchical, but more and more data show econ is rotten to its core by a total lack of diversity 9/Permalink
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Not only this lack of diversity is wrong it itself, but it makes us BAD SOCIAL SCIENTISTS Why so many of us remained silent about racial injustice? Because we have absolutely NOTHING to say about it! 10/Permalink
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As @TrevonDLogan keep repeating, we don’t have the tools, we don’t have the frameworks We overlook way to easily the FUCKING IMPORTANT WORK of people who can provide those Why? Because it’s not fun Because it doesn’t fit our well-behaved models I’m so SICK of this shit 11/Permalink
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Econ is like a fancy toy for some rich white males who never experienced any kind of prejudice and never realized their toy can actually turn into a weapon to enact meaningful social change And too many of us felt into this trap of "trying to blend in" 12/Permalink
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So why those alternative frameworks didn’t made it? Because they were NEVER published in the most prestigious journals in our field, the ones that set the tone in the profession And this is where our elite failed us. Because they are the ones in charge of these journals. 13/Permalink
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By keeping outside of the sight of so many economists deep structural problems like racism, misogyny and homophobia (among others), they made econ blind to so many real societal problems worth being studied 14/Permalink
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They also enabled the fallacy that econ is a meritocracy to spread out But I can tell it’s a lie, and I’m a white (gay) male. I’m not the most privileged, but I’m still privileged compared to others. If my meritocracy story is a horror story, how do you think is their? 15/Permalink
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Deep down, the crippling state of econ is the result of very steep power imbalances And you cannot isolate one problem to another The lack of Black people is linked to the lack of professional diversity, and it’s linked to the lack of women. And so on. 16/Permalink
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We spend our days arguing about causality but we completely forgot to pay attention to RETROACTION LOOPS Because it’s not in our framework. Because it doesn’t fit with our models. But what if IT MATTERS to understand real life? 17/
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I won’t even talk about macro I haven’t met a single macro researcher who believe in DSGE models But they all publish DSGE papers because they’re afraid for their career But what about the healthy and much needed scientific debate? 18/Permalink
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But in the case of macro, some very fancy people have built their careeer in DSGE models Giving room to critics of these models might destroy their scientific prestige, and prevent them from getting a Nobel prize But is it how we want to do science? 19/Permalink
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Because when we fail our science, it has real life consequences Remember the shitty Reinhardt and Rogoff paper on austerity ten years ago? It enabled so many politicians to do so many destructive policies. AND IT WAS A SHITTY PAPER 20/Permalink
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Recently, Reinhardt was promoted as World Bank chief econ How somebody who *NEVER* corrected her paper despite all the évidences can land such a position? Many Black economists have seen their important papers rejected for much less than that How isn’t it privilege? 21/Permalink
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So if we want to enact real change in our profession, we need to take some real action We need to open the doors and the windows to different people, with different backgrounds and different ideas Diversity will help econ to be *more* robust, not less 22/Permalink
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We need @AEAjournals leaders to come from more than just MIT, Harvard and Berkeley (something that will please @JakeVigdor) We need to drastically increase the number of papers published in the fanciest journals We need to put a more diverse group of people in charge 23/Permalink
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I’m not saying it will be easy, and that what I’m discussing here is a perfect solution But if we don’t want to wake up in 20 years and look behind and say "dear God, nothing has changed", we need to step up our game and do something bolder 24/Permalink
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I’m a fucking PhD student, I’m fucking trying to finish the writing of my thesis in the midst the worst global pandemic since 100 years, and I’m honestly fucking tired of being among the few ones who dare to open their mouth and try to say the quiet part out loud 25/Permalink
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And I’m sorry if some of you feel uncomfortable while reading this thread, but you will survive We need to have this conversation about the toxic hierarchical structure of our field, and I think it’s much more important than your comfort right now FINPermalink
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