Thursday, January 19, 2012

Ciência Econômica como Clube

Como publicar nos top journals em economia? O caminho tradicional, mais seguro e direto é ser membro do clube. Paul Krugman explica como funciona:
And who was in the loop? Well, there were groups of people in each subfield that were the real centers of information and reputation. I was part of two such groups, one in real trade, one in international money. I referred at the time to the “floating crap game”, hence the video above — there would be various conferences around the world, but the same 30 or so people would show up at each conference, like Nathan Detroit’s gamblers finding different hideouts each night.You got provisional entree to such a group through connections — basically, being a student of someone who mattered, and being tagged as having potential. You got permanent membership by doing enough clever stuff; the informal rule was three good papers, one to get noticed, one to show that the first wasn’t a fluke, one to show that you had staying power.And journal publication? Well, tenure committees needed that, but it was so slow relative to the pace of ongoing work that it no longer acted as an information conduit. I presented my paper on target zones at a 1988 conference; by the time it was formally published, in 1991, I had to add a section on the subsequent literature, because there were around 150 derivative papers already out there. The whole thing was informal — and also deeply undemocratic, offering very little way for outsiders to enter the debate.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Pra quem achava que a economia é uma ciência sem qq credibilidade pois é uma ciência "fraca" (alguns acham que nem é ciência), isso é revelador. Economia como atividade intelectual é, para mim de agora em diante, uma pseudo ciência praticada com standards acadêmicos brasileiros (ou seja, baseada no compadrio). O impressionante é ainda existir departamentos de economia em universidades sérias.