Do economists have an issue with interdisciplinarity?

In a previous article (English version, French version), I listed 5 characteristics of World-class economists. Amongst those, the first one was to be opened to other disciplines. I received interesting messages and comments about this point, saying openness in economics was already a reality. So, I come back with a bit more details and statistics about this: openness exists, but economics remains far less interdisciplinary than other fields.

(A French version of this article has previously been published here on Linkedin Pulse)

“A poor economist would be someone who was only an economist”

F. Hayek, Austrian and British economist and philosopher, recipient of the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

1. Social phenomena are multiple and complex

Individuals often act differently if they are alone or in a group (cf. consumption of illicit substances). These same individuals also make short-term decisions that contradict those that they make in the long term (cf. voting decisions, choosing to dedicatedly practice a sport, or the decision to start a diet).

Both of these examples show that, accordingly, there is still plenty of room for growth in the theorization of the social sciences, and particularly in the economy. It is moreover what often attracts engineers, mathematicians or physicists to economics; they are in search of a discipline that remains to be built. Nevertheless, if the economic approach is still being developed, there are two strong tendencies that have distinguished themselves over the years.

Moving towards a mathematization of economics

The first tendency is a strong mathematization in economical research. Indeed, it is now rare to read an academic article in economics that does not present its theories in a mathematized frame. At a micro level, this theoretical frame often models the way that an individual’s satisfaction is affected by a whole series of incentives. In other cases, at a macro level, the theoretical frame models the evolution of a country’s economic health according to a variety of other endogenous or exogenous variables to the political action.

If it is entirely possible to discuss the benefits or limits produced by such a mathematization, this formal approach has undoubtedly strengthened, little by little, the “scientific” character given to the economy.

Moving towards a distinction from the other social sciences

The second tendency, related to the first, is the progressive oversight of the fact that economics remains a social science. Within the social sciences, economics has progressively withdrawn into itself. With the advent of the mathematization, economic articles and their authors tend to distance themselves from analyses made in other domains of research, such as anthropology, history, sociology, psychology, management, or philosophy. On the contrary, the formal approach used in economics has moved closer towards mathematics and statistics.

If it is clear that this movement towards mathematics and statistics is fundamental to being able to draw strong, significant, and non-biased conclusions from the observations described in academic articles, the fact remains that a mainly unidirectional movement towards the hard sciences is not enough.

“ There is very little chance of being a good economist if you are nothing else. Being in constant interaction, social phenomena are not really understood in isolation.”

John Stuart Mill, 19th century British philosopher, logician and economist.

2. Statisticts show interdisciplinarity exists, but less in economics than in other disciplines

In a recent academic article provocatively titled “The Superiority of Economists” M. Fourcade (University of California, Berkeley), Y. Algan (Sciences Po Paris), and E. Ollion (University of Strasbourg) compare the social sciences to one another and attempt to quantify on what basis it is possible to say that today, economics has taken a dominating position. This article exposes and documents an increase in confidence among leading economists, who sometimes see themselves as superior to other intellectuals in the social sciences.

Few citations of work done in the other social sciences

The “insularization” of economic research is the first point discussed in the research article. The authors cite an American article, certainly a little dated, but that shows how social science research tends to only cite works within their own field of research. Economics is the subsection of the social sciences in which this phenomenon of lack of interdisciplinarity is strongest. In 1997,

• 81% of economic citations were intra-disciplinary (the 19% of interdisciplinary citations had to do with mainly math, statistics and finance).
• This compares to 52% in sociology,
• 53% in anthropology,
• and 59% in political sciences (the original article by Jacobs (2013) drew from the citations used in the most-read scientific journals in each field).

A weak value for interdisciplinarity in economics

This isolation is voluntary and is found projected even in the mentality of economists when they are asked if interdisciplinary knowledge is better than when researchers are concentrated on a single discipline.

According to a 2006 study conducted on a sample of 100 individuals per field (which is not necessarily representative):

• a 42% minority of economists agreed to say that interdisciplinary works are better than single-focus works,
• compared to 60% of political scientists,
• 68% of historians,
• 73% of sociologists,
• 79% of psychologists,
• and 87% of financiers (this last point is very surprising given the connection between economic research and finance).

These disparities can be explained in different ways. On the one hand, it may be that the dominant approaches always have fewer incentives to be open to the peripheral approaches. On the other hand, it is also possible that the methodological approach in economics adapts few methods from the other social sciences, which turn out to be closer to one another. Finally, the internal cohesion (or at least the impression of cohesion) of economics pushes its followers to more self-reflection than outward reflection.

Talk to you soon,

Quentin Roquigny
CEO and founder, Research Galaxxy — solution for readers of research articles.