You would be left with a profession top-heavy with historians, historians of economic thought, political economists and development economists, where the minorities who refuse to draw inside the lines are substantially larger. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
If those on the margins are incapable of filling the vacuum, someone else will do it for them.
I have spoken to young economists who have felt threatened if they stepped outside a certain line. I'm imagining that ideologies may play a much lesser role in the near future, at least for the next 20 years or so.
One fewer than when I went to grad school, alas, as the University of Tennessee Econ department "tipped" the year after I graduated, and as far as I understand, the retired Institutionalist economists have been replaced by mainstream economists.
Indeed, it is striking that the toolkit of the New Institutionalists would be capable of roaming much further away from traditional marginalism, but most restrict their work to questions that can be translated back into the conceptual framework of traditional marginalism. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
