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Adam Smith and I Have Something in Common
October 24, 2007 Economics Problems

And no it is not our preference for this. It seems that Mr. Smith would have trouble publishing his work in today’s top economics journals.

Of more than 1200 papers published in ten top journals, six percent met a weak criterion of math-free, three percent an intermediate criterion, and only 1.5 percent a strong criterion. General interest journals published more math-free papers than field journals. If Adam Smith were alive today, to survive he would in all likelihood need to learn math. His extensive mastery of literature, history, ethics, and rhetoric would ill-serve his career (my emphasis added).

"2" Comments
  1. You think you have it bad? Imagine having to deal with Leftys all day every day and never having a discussion worth remembering. LS is way more boring than I could’ve ever imagined…Sure your dilemma is career-based but…No: you’re right: you do indeed have it a worse than I do.

    Sorry Mike. If I had a journal, I would publish your paper in an instant, and I would demand it be free of confoundematics.

    Here’s something you could model: why does it seem that the more intelligent a person is, the more they tend to be correspondingly uninteresting? I’m surrounded by boring smart people and I don’t understand how or why that could happen…

  2. I think the relationship is something like … the most intelligent people I know tend to be the most self-assured. And while that is a generally useful attribute, I think it lends itself to dogmatism, rigidity and elitism, which make not only for unpalatable political positions, but a lack of interesting exchange, as you reference above.

    Luckily for me I am not too intelligent, and at least hope I have the ability to recognize how much there is for me to know.

    Stick it out in LS, when you are out of there you will be able to do a million things that you would not be able to do otherwise. Plus, without you, what will happen to the voice of reason at these places?

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