Sunday, July 21, 2013

The AEA executive is still not representative

A year ago, I modestly called on the AEA to open its ranks officers to those who are not at (mostly private) elite universities. They are not representative of the profession, as many of us work at lower ranked research universities, liberal arts colleges, government, industry and think tanks. They all deserve some representation as their interests differ quite a bit from big shots with almost guaranteed grants and easy access to top journals and conferences.

At the time, I suggested to write in Gregory Burge (link corrected) on the election ballot. As the AEA did not disclose election results (if it did, please tell me where), I have no idea whether it had any impact. I suggest to try again this year. Last year, I posted about this when I got the ballot, which may have been too late. This year, I make the call earlier, so that more people can adjust their vote. Indeed, the candidates this year are:

For President-elect:
Richard Thaler, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

For Vice-Presidents:
David Card, University of California, Berkeley
Judith Chevalier, Yale School of Management
N. Gregory Mankiw, Harvard University
Jeffrey Wooldridge, Michigan State University

For Executive Committee:
Dora Costa, University of California, Los Angeles
Guido Imbens, Stanford Graduate School of Business
David Laibson, Harvard University
John Williams, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

While there is at least someone for a non-university environment and three candidates from public universities, which is an encouragement, this is still far from representative. Vote for Gregory Burge (write-in) for every position.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Note that Dora Costa and David Card are definitely part of the closed AEA club. I do not know about Jeff Wooldridge.

John Williams is president of the SF Fed, thus also a big shot.

Anonymous said...

I am glad to see you back after this long silence. And I am glad that you are still pushing to curtail the clubbish actions at the AEA. We, members of the economics plebs also pay our dues and want representation!

Anonymous said...

EL, you could have mentioned the "incident" with the Reinhart-Rogoff publication in the AER Papers and Proceedings, which is just the tip of the iceberg in the cronyism at the AEA. There is no peer review in the AER P&P, the papers are selected informally by the president, who is not even elected (there is never another candidate).

The AEA goes so far to make sure that P&P articles count as much as other AER articles by not making a distinction in their bibliographic data (EconLit, RePEc and I guess elsewhere). This is just bad. Insiders get free AERs.

Kansan said...

Welcome back EL!

Burge had my vote last year, and will have it again this year. I know several others in my department voted for him, and by extrapolation, he should have received a noticeable number of write-in votes. The AEA needs to pay attention (and disclose election results).

And why all these anonymous comments?

Anonymous said...

The buddy system is working very well in some of the AEJs. That needs to stop, too!

Anonymous said...

Vote only for Burge. Do not vote for any of the AEA suggestions!

Anonymous said...

Burge's current homepage is https://sites.google.com/site/gregoryburgeou/, not the one EL linked.

Anonymous said...

I will be voting for Thaler, whiny LRMs.