An introduction to the spread of economic ideas

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Abstract
Given the importance of ideas it is strange that the process, and institutions, through which economic ideas are transferred from individual brains into the general inventory of ideas and eventually into policy has not been considered seriously. Upon reflection the reasons become clear. The concepts are vague, the institutions hazy, and the process messy. Studying the spread of ideas is like studying subatomic particles with half-lives of nanoseconds.About the only way that we will be able to say anything meaningful is by limiting our focus, and the papers in this volume concentrate on the recent spread of ideas in the United States, within the profession and from the profession to the common reader. The popularization of economic ideas, as such, is not considered because it is too large and amorphous a subject. The volume is divided into four sections: Part 1 considers the nature of the economics profession, whether it has any ideas to spread, and how ideas spread within it; Part 2 considers the spread of ideas from economists to the lay public; Part 3 considers the spread of ideas from economists to politicians; and Part 4 considers how the funding of economic ideas influences their diffusion.The difficulty of the subject is not the only reason for its previous neglect. According to standard scientific methodologies – positivism, falsificationism, and modernism – it is a nonsubject. These standard methodologies implicitly assume that the “best” ideas necessarily win out. If this is the case, why study the process? The relevant issue is not how do ideas spread, but rather how to disseminate “sound” ideas.

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