The Econ Echo Chamber

At a moment where Harvard is grappling with how to promote intellectual vitality on its campus, the Economics Departments should likewise take heed and introspect about the value of diverse speech and thought. For when it comes to the diversity of both people and ideas, they are falling quickly behind.

On the people front, economics remains as male-dominated as it was in 1992 when it comes to the number of American undergraduates studying economics, with about 2.5 male majors for every one female major. At Harvard, the numbers look slightly brighter: An estimated 35 percent of economics concentrators in 2018 were women. While this is about the same as the Computer Science department, it is no number to boast about. And while no numbers exist regarding racial demographics in Harvard’s concentrations, nationwide only 19 percent of economics faculty were racial minorities.

Discrepancies are generally fiercer at the research and teaching level. Economics falls just below computer science, and well below math when it comes to female faculty, with only 27 percent of faculty in American economics departments identifying as female in 2020.

The exclusivity of the field runs deeper than the lack of women or people of color. Economics is notoriously top-down and insular, with a track-record of resisting unconventional backgrounds, as well as contributions from other disciplines.

Take the well-established rung-order of economics journals. The so-called “top five” carry weight disproportionate to top journals in other disciplines, with tenure at top universities being highly correlated with authorship in these publications. A 2019 paper from the National Bureau of Economics Research warned that this overreliance on the top five to screen new talent incentivized “careerism over creativity” among young economists.

Between 2000 and 2006, roughly a quarter of authors in four of these top journals came from just six universities: Harvard, MIT, UChicago, Stanford, Berkeley and Princeton. These schools also supplied 56 percent of these journals’ editors, with 44 percent coming from Harvard and MIT alone.

It is also worth noting that the John Bates Clark Medal – an annual prize awarded to the American economist under forty deemed to have made the most significant contribution to the field – has been awarded to economists with PhDs from Harvard, MIT, or Stanford in 83 percent of cases since 2000. The particular dominance of Harvard makes the topic all the more pertinent to us.

There are several aspects about this concentration of recognition that are troubling. For one, of course, it prompts the question of who is being excluded and why.

Second, lack of diversity — in terms of gender, race, nationality, or education — breeds a kind of uninspiring, uninviting, and unproductive groupthink. Similar people come up with similar ideas. They have similar values and concerns, and have been trained to think about issues, say international development or reparations, in similar ways.

A telling example of what is lost when representation is neglected, female economists are more likely than their male colleagues to support government intervention and environmental regulation. They are also likelier to perceive a gender gap in wages and the labor market in general. This should remind us that the inclusion of diverse people in research and teaching settings is not just about ticking a box. It is about ensuring the issues relevant to public policy are being fully covered — without blind spots.

Another symptom of the field’s monolithic tendencies is that economists are less open to interdisciplinary collaboration. One study found that while sociologists cite other disciplines in their work 52 percent of the time and political scientists cite them 59 percent of the time, economists reference their counterparts in other disciplines only 19 percent of the time.

And when asked if interdisciplinary knowledge is better than knowledge derived from a single discipline, just 43 percent of economists said yes. The number amongst psychologists and sociologists was almost twice as high.

If we can agree that exposure to diverging normative beliefs, empirical methods, and policy concerns is important in other areas of undergraduate education, then surely economics must be no exception.

One way to revitalize the field is to start by diversifying the people and hope that diverse ideas follow.

Another approach is to start with diversifying the ideas themselves. If the economics curriculum entailed a more interdisciplinary range of concentration requirements, for instance, or if a broader range of economic thinkers were taught on the curriculum, the exchange of perspectives might be freer and the types of students drawn into the field more varied.

If we wish to push the field further, harnessing the power of diverse ideas and interdisciplinary perspectives is the obvious first step.

Maibritt Henkel ’25 is a double concentrator in Social Studies and Economics in Pforzheimer House. Mie L. Holm ’25 is a double concentrator in Social Studies and Economics in Pforzheimer House. Their column, “Rethinking Economics,” runs bi-weekly on Fridays.

By Sami E. Turner