Who Are These Economists, Anyway?

By James K. Galbraith, Thought and Action, The NEA Higher Education Journal, Fall 2009.

This article is partly a response to Paul Krugman’s piece in the Sunday New York Times of September 6, 2009, on the failures of the economists in the face of the crisis. Here, Senior Scholar James K. Galbraith takes up the challenge of identifying some of those economists—the “nobodies” of the profession—who did see it coming, and who have not gotten the credit they deserve. He also points out the urgent need to expand the academic space and the public visibility of ongoing work that is of actual value when faced with the many deep problems of economic life in our time—an imperative for university administrators, for funding agencies, for foundations, and for students.