Notes On The New Ranking Of German Speaking Influential Economists

Posted: 9/9/2014  Updated: 9/10/2014

Trigger

Just read “Österreichs Top-Ökonom in den Reihen der Agenda Austria” (German language) which came as an e-mail announcement from the Austrian think tank Agenda Austria. The top Austrian economist according to this announcement is Friedrich Schneider.

So three leading german language newspapers from Germany (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), Austria (Die Presse), and Switzerland (Neue Zuericher Zeitung) got together and came up with this new ranking of most influential German speaking economists (see e.g. here, German language).

Reinforcing Dismal Economists

When you look at their methodology how they select those most influential economists, you cannot help yourself but thinking of a downward spiral.

Selection criteria for those economists are:

1. Most relevant citations in economic journals etc.
2. Most citations in the media
3. Most sought after by politicians and government bureaucrats

Those economists who have an urge to express their opinions in public media are quite often very biased and have an ideological agenda most often big government leaning.

Those economists who are sought after by politicians or bureaucrats are many times those economists who cherish to be an insider or mouthpiece to the power circles of politics. How many politicians choose economists who oppose their bad policies as advisors?

Alternative Selection Criteria

One reader of my blog post criticized this post by saying what’s my point and asking what I would do differently.

First, it is probably a difficult task to come up with better ranking criteria.

As alternatives, I would propose:

1. To ask a representative sample of each major school of economic thought who they think represents their school the best.
2. To ask politicians and bureaucrats, which economists they like and, more importantly, which ones they do not like (and these economists cannot be from the list of the ones that are liked).
3. Economists who are shy of publicity, but have made significant contributions to economic policy as perceived by their peers and others