Evaluating Economic Research in a Contested Discipline: Ranking, Pluralism, and the Future of Heterodox Economics

This book challenges the view that using SSCI journal citations (especially its impact factor score) and peer review/evaluation are the best ways (in that they are the most objective ways) to evaluate economic research. In a contested discipline such as economics those methods are used by mainstream economists to attack and dismiss heterodox economics. In the book, discriminatory use of these methods vis–a–vis heterodox economics is investigated (with case studies in Australia, Italy, and the United States) and discussed.  In addition, it is also shown how such methods can be used to promote heterodox economics and heterodox research (without at the same time denigrating mainstream economics and its research). Finally, the book concludes with the unexpected position that a contested economics discipline is a good thing for it makes for better economists who are more capable of contributing in an open and intelligent manner to economic–social policy issues.

Editors Introduction (Wolfram Elsner and Fred Lee).

Ranking Economics Departments in a Contested Discipline: A Bibliometric Approach to Quality Equality Between Theoretically Distinct Sub–disciplines (Frederic S. Lee, Therese C. Grijalva, and Clifford Nowell).

Citation Metrics: Serious Drawbacks, Perverse Incentives and Strategic Options for Heterodox Economics (Jakob Kapeller).

Research Quality Rankings of Heterodox Economic Journals in a Contested Discipline (Frederic S. Lee and Bruce C. Cronin, assisted by Scott McConnell and Erik Dean).

Increasing the Impact of Heterodox Work:  Insights from RoSE (Martha A. Starr).

The Diffusion of Heterodox Economics (Bruce Cronin).

Pluralism at Risk? Heterodox Economic Approaches and the Evaluation of Economic Research in Italy (Marcella Corsi, Carlo D Ippoliti and Federico Lucidi).

Research Evaluation Down Under: An Outsider s View from the Inside of the Australian Approach (Harry Bloch).

Economic Performance and Institutional Economics in Poland after 1989 (Agnieszka Ziomek).

From Heterodoxy to Orthodoxy and Vice Versa: Economics and Social Sciences in the Division of Academic Work (Dieter Bögenhold).

The Economists of Tomorrow: The Case for Assertive Pluralism in Economics Education(Alan Freeman).

Heterodox Economics and the Scientist s Role in Society (Marco Novarese and Andrea Pozzali).

Frederic S. Lee is a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. He has published extensively on heterodox microeconomics, on the history of heterodox economics. He was the editor of the Heterodox Economics Newsletter and the executive director of ICAPE. He is currently the editor of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. He has published in numerous heterodox journals including the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Review of Radical Political Economics, Review of Social Economy, and the Journal of Economic Issues.