Divided We Stand? On the Political Engagement of U.S. Economists

Abstract

This article contributes to the debate on the role of normative values and political preferences among (publicly visible) economists in the United States. For this purpose, we conduct a social network analysis on the signatories of economist petitions, which we identify as one channel for economists to exert public influence. Our contribution is twofold: On the one hand, we provide an extended empirical basis for the debate on consensus in economics and the role of political preferences and normative values in economics. On the other hand, this article offers a viable tool to trace the normative charging of (prospective) economist petitions and economists based on the social structure of petition networks. The main empirical finding of our article is that there is a very strong partisan divide among petition-signing economists in the United States, which mirrors the cleavage within the U.S. political system. We also find that the bipartite partisan structure of the economist petition network increases with the political involvement of economists. This divide is particularly stark in the field of fiscal policy. A greater tendency towards consensus, in turn, can be found with respect to monetary policy, carbon pricing, immigration, free trade or market-based decision tools in general.