Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Boettke, Fink, and Smith on "Mainstream vs. Mainline"

They have a new article in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology on the subject. This one tracks the influence of Nobel winners that the authors slot in one of the two categories.

My critique of this whole line of argument is probably familiar to most of you by now. While the sociological distinction is a fair enough one to make, I think whenever Boettke gets into specifics it looks suspiciously like "the economists I like are mainline and the ones I don't like are mainstream". He is on particularly dubious ground when he kicks certain economists out of the Smith/Hume tradition. This is more based on past discussions (a good example is this post). I haven't read this new article, although I suspect it has some of the same problems. I'll download it when I'm on campus later today.

UPDATE: And in the same issue, Gene and Peter Leeson whip out Kuhn (if not literally... I haven't downloaded this one either... certainly in spirit)!

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