Fathers of Neoliberalism:

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1 Fathers of Neoliberalism: The Academic and Professional Performance of the Chicago School, Lasse Folke Henriksen Leonard Seabrooke Kevin L Young Copenhagen Business School Copenhagen Business School University of Massachusetts Amherst

2 Motivation The Neoliberal Ascent From a minority tribe within the economics profession, to significant world-historic dominance Whether How did Neoliberalism ascend? We look at professional practices/performance of economists,

3 Our starting points: NLs had to replace an existing ideology The battle over the dominant economic paradigm had to be struggled for This struggle took many forms, and was multi-faceted; one crucial stage of the process was within a profession: economics.

4 What was going on in the Economics Profession is Critical Ideas that key actors used (e.g. NL politicians, think tanks, NL activists, business associations used as part of the NL transition, etc.). Had to have popularity Had to have scientific authority Had to have a cadre of experts that could be utilized, take on different roles, etc. To sustain NL ideology, you need an army of adherents professional economists are absolutely critical

5 Our Approach Examine economists level of performance and career paths. Did NLs outperform their non-nl peers? More publications? More grants? More government positions? This performance crosses generations

But, we need a comparison group [equivalent chances of reproductive success ] Find the

6 Analytical Setup Find descendants of Neoliberal Fathers Establish attributes of professional standing E.g. Citations, external funding, placement etc. But, we need a comparison group [equivalent chances of reproductive success ] Find the matched peers of Neoliberal Fathers, and find their descendants Compare the professional performance of the two groups

7 Neoliberal Fathers

8 Charles River Fathers

9 Figure 1: Milton Friedman s Genealogical Forward Path in the RepEc Network

10 Finding Lineages 26 Fathers à 566 Children (PhD students who graduated prior to 1980) A wide variety of sources: RepEc Genealogy Mathematics Genealogy Festschrifts Obituaries Oral histories Archives (Hoover, JFK Memorial, Harvard U, MIT thesis archive) Contacted cohorts of students, econ departments

11 Figure 2. Number of students sampled per father and the number of reproductive years

12 Figure 3. Number of PhDs graduated and years of graduation

13 Figure 4. Mean cites per article for schools of thought and departments

14 Figure 5. Selected in-group citation measures for the two schools of thought

15 Figure 6. Proportion of published articles flagging funding.

16 Figure 7. Funding sources.

17 Figure 8: NSF Mean Grant Funding to Economists (in $ 1000), early 1970s-1985 Chicago Harvard MIT NSF Funding ($ thousands)

18 Figure 9: NSF Funding to Departments in the 1970s and early 1980s Chicago Harvard MIT NSF Funding ($ thousands) s early 1980s 1970s early 1980s 1970s early 1980s

19 Figure 11: Careers Paths from Universities to Sector

20 Figure 12: Careers Paths from Universities to Non-Academic Sectors

21 Figure 13: Careers Paths from Universities to Government Agencies

22 Figure 14: Careers Paths from Universities to Prestige of Employing Academic Institution

23 Figure 15: Network of Journal Acknowledgement Ties NL group in Blue and Charles River in Pink.

24 Figure 16: Transitivity and Reciprocity in Economists Acknowledgement Networks

25 Conclusions The NL Ascent has an important professional performance angle We Compared a Neoliberal group ( fathers and children ) to the Charles River group, for differences in: Historic citations External funding Career paths In-group cohesion Social norms of reciprocity and insurgent solidarity played an important role in the neoliberal ascent

26 Thanks for your attention. Comments and critiques most welcome.

27 Figure 10: Sector Distribution by University Over Time

28 Figure A1: Studies of Economics Department Prestige and Graduate Training Included in our Data and Their Timelines

29 Figure A2: Distribution of Prestige Among 152 US Economics Departments total std articles per capita std. articles rank

30 Figure A3: Averaged Standardized Department Standing of 50 US Econ departments, 1950s-late 1970s rank_1950s Rochester American Ohio State Washington St Louis Cambridge Oxford Brown Penn State LSE Claremont New School Syracuse U Virginia Pittsburgh Brookings Iowa State Texas NYU Carnegie Tech Michigan State Purdue CIT IMF Duke Illinois Vanderbilt Pennsylvania Federal Reserve System Cornell Minnesota Northwestern UCLA Berkeley Princeton MIT John Hopkins Michigan Yale Stanford California Columbia Wisconsin Chicago Harvard rank_1960s LSE IMF Cambridge Oxford Brookings CIT American Ohio State Iowa State New School Syracuse Washington St Louis Pittsburgh Texas NYU California Federal Reserve System Illinois U Virginia Vanderbilt Cornell Claremont Penn State Purdue Michigan State Duke Rochester Brown Northwestern Pennsylvania UCLA John Hopkins Michigan Minnesota Columbia Wisconsin Carnegie Tech Princeton Stanford Yale Berkeley MIT Chicago Harvard avgrank_1950s avgrank_1960s ranker_early1970s Claremont Wesleyan Iowa Southern State Hawaii Methodist Rutgers Iowa Washington-St.L. Florida UCSB State Massachusetts Florida Vanderbilt Ohio UCSD State SUNY-Buffalo Penn Kansas State Duke Virginia Indiana NYU Rice Michigan Illinois State Texas Maryland A&M VPI Johns Purdue Hopkins Cornell North Michigan Carolina UCLA Columbia Washington-Sttle Minnesota Berkeley Carnegie Rochester Northwestern Pennsylvania Brown Yale Stanford Wisconsin Princeton MIT Chicago Harvard ranker_late1970s Iowa Hawaii State George Vanderbilt Washington Duke UC Rutgers Davis Missouri CUNY Virginia UCSD Michigan UCSB Colorado-Boulder Maryland Ohio Iowa State VPI Illinois Florida Penn Indiana State State Texas Johns A&M Washington-Sttle Hopkins Cornell NYU North N.C. Massachusetts State Carolina Florida Tulane Wisconsin Brown Washington-St.L. Cal Berkeley Tech Northwestern Pennsylvania Minnesota UCLA Stanford Columbia Yale Princeton Harvard Carnegie Rochester MIT Chicago avgrank_early1970s avgrank_late1970s

31 Figure A4: Pearson Correlation Matrix for Different Indicators of Economics Department Prestige and Graduate Training Caliber, for early 1970s period

32 Figure A5: Scatterplot of Departmental Prowess during the Early 1970s Period, with 3 K-clustered Areas

33 Figure A7. Hierarchical Clustering of US Economics Departments, Early 1970s

34 Figure A7. Hierarchical Clustering of US Economics Departments, Early 1970s

35 igure B1. Number of staff and PhD graduates at Harvard, MIT and Chicago

36 Figure B2: Publication Venues , Represented as Frequency-Scaled Wordclouds MIT Harvard Chicago MIT

Table 2 Overall Heterodox-Adjusted Rankings for Ph.D.-Granting Institutions in Economics

Table 2 Overall Heterodox-Adjusted Rankings for Ph.D.-Granting Institutions in Economics ing Economics Departments in a Contested Discipline 23 Heterodox-Adjusted ings for Ph.D.-Granting Institutions in Economics ) ) Harvard U 43 1 (1) 5.47 1 (1) UC Berkeley 56 2 (2) 4.08 4 (4) Princeton U