The dismal science
It gets dismalier every year
THERE’S a problem going on around Econ 101 these days, and it has nothing to do with 8 a.m. classes or arguments about tariffs. The problem is logorrhea, and it’s contagious.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the average length of economics papers has tripled in the last 40 years. Now, there may be more trade going on, with more people and businesses in the world, but triple? It sounds like econ students—who become economists through metamorphosis—are trying to smarten up their college and professional papers by padding their work.
Trust us, more words don’t necessarily mean better writing. Somebody once apologized to a correspondent thus: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” That person knew the value of brevity. The quote has been infamously misattributed to a half-dozen people, but our favorite misattribution may be to Mark Twain, who knew the importance of editors. He once tried to be one. (“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very.’ Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”)
But what would a paper about economics be without all the expert analysis, multifaceted rationalizations and statistical tables? Besides readable?
After all, to get that Nobel, it might take years to think up another economic theory, and 90 pages to explain it. Complete with appendices and graphics and reviews of other papers and references to thick books that few real people have read. All so somebody can explain why the minimum wage is good for workers, no matter what reality might say. Or how the free market would improve with just a little more government help.
“Certainly not all papers should be short,” Amy Finkelstein, an economist at MIT, told the Journal. “But on the other hand, not all papers should be long.”
Oh, those other hands! Harry S. Truman once declared he wanted a one-handed economist. So he wouldn’t get on-the-one-hand-this, on-the-otherhand-that treatment. Now economists are giving that same treatment to the length of their papers.
The good news for the dismal science: There’s a new journal coming for those who study economics, one that focuses on concise papers and won’t accept the 90-page horse chokers. The journal is to be called American Economic Review: Insights.
Ah, well, the title of the journal can’t be helped. We’re talking economists here. One day they’ll add some poets to their tribe. Until then, get used to having a damned hard time reading those damned long papers about economics. See appendix 2-B, paragraph iv, for more detail.