What do you think?
Rate this book
The Curious Culture of Economic Theory
An essay collection that insightfully explores the professional culture of contemporary economic theory, highlighting key features of successful economic theory from the last quarter century.
When is a theoretical result taken seriously enough for economic application? How do theorists actively try to influence this judgment? What determines whether a new theoretical subfield adopts a “pure” or an “applied” style? How do theorists respond to economists’ penchant for “rational” explanations of human behavior? These are just some of the questions regarding the professional culture of contemporary economic theory that Ran Spiegler attempts to answer in this incisive essay collection, The Curious Culture of Economic Theory . In exploring these questions, Spiegler addresses the norms that economic theorists apply as they produce, evaluate, and disseminate research.
Introducing a new genre—a kind of cultural criticism of economic theory—the essays in this unique collection highlight elements of style and rhetoric that characterize classic pieces of economic theory from the last quarter century. For each piece, Spiegler offers a precise yet accessible exposition of modern classics of economic theory while placing them in the broader context of the field’s professional culture. Affectionate in its criticism and anthropological in its approach, The Curious Culture of Economic Theory is as valuable a complement to standard textbooks in graduate-level economic theory, game theory, and behavioral economics as it is to the libraries of practicing economic theorists, academic economists, historians of economic thought, and philosophers of economics.
When is a theoretical result taken seriously enough for economic application? How do theorists actively try to influence this judgment? What determines whether a new theoretical subfield adopts a “pure” or an “applied” style? How do theorists respond to economists’ penchant for “rational” explanations of human behavior? These are just some of the questions regarding the professional culture of contemporary economic theory that Ran Spiegler attempts to answer in this incisive essay collection, The Curious Culture of Economic Theory . In exploring these questions, Spiegler addresses the norms that economic theorists apply as they produce, evaluate, and disseminate research.
Introducing a new genre—a kind of cultural criticism of economic theory—the essays in this unique collection highlight elements of style and rhetoric that characterize classic pieces of economic theory from the last quarter century. For each piece, Spiegler offers a precise yet accessible exposition of modern classics of economic theory while placing them in the broader context of the field’s professional culture. Affectionate in its criticism and anthropological in its approach, The Curious Culture of Economic Theory is as valuable a complement to standard textbooks in graduate-level economic theory, game theory, and behavioral economics as it is to the libraries of practicing economic theorists, academic economists, historians of economic thought, and philosophers of economics.
- GenresEconomics
216 pages, Paperback
Published April 16, 2024
4 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
About the author
Ran Spiegler
3 booksI am a professor of economics at Tel Aviv University and University College London, specializing in economic theory.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 19, 2024
A nice and impressive introduction to common knowledge.
January 9, 2025
A very fun book for a very specific audience. I love these 'sociology of academia' kind of books that take you behind the curtain and point out all the weird tricks academic writers use. Did worry I'd need to know more theory to enjoy it, but thankfully the math is skippable and easy to work through if needed. In fact, you usually should skim it since the real gems are the cultural criticism parts
June 2, 2024
A boring read, but shines in some areas. Its niche specialisation, dry academic writing, jargon and equations weigh it down. Few gems: an exposition of recent papers, a convincing critique of the Becker-Murphy addiction model, commentary on the decline of micro theory and the rise of online appendixes, and the chapter on cover versions.
April 22, 2024
As a non-theorist economist with many theorist colleagues, I often have a sense of what they are doing but lack the cultivated “taste” to understand why. Spiegler’s new monograph (free on the MIT Press website) offers one insider’s perspective, with a more well-informed brand of puzzlement. While cultivating such taste is probably an endeavor that requires deep expertise in addition to shared sensibilities, this book gives a sense of some of the key distinctions, and also offers, along the way, capsule descriptions of a large number of the major developments in economic theory over the past 30 years. It is worthwhile to read just for its clear explanations of Bayesian persuasion, global games, why Phillip Strack just won the Clark medal, and most especially developments in behavioral economics.
Spiegler is from the Rubinstein school of models as "fables" instead of tools for measurement or problem-solving, and much of the text can be read as a G.H. Hardy style plea to free from the shackles of having to be "useful" or "applied", but I think there's also something deeper there. Specifically, his critique of the applied theory style often involves, through analyses of popular models or modes of work in theory, illustrations of the way in which perceived usefulness hinges on superficial details that can obscure rather than illuminate underlying features of the logical argument behind the conclusions of the model. His critiques of global games, rational inattention, or beta-delta hyperbolic discounting, to list a few, could be seen as pure aestheticism, or inside-baseball point scoring, but there is also a hope for progress towards a more reliable and comprehensive science of human social reasoning.
Aside from this plea for "fundamental science", there is a theme that derives from his work on models as modes of communication, persuasion, and inquiry. In this context, the characterization of theory as rhetoric is not just dismissive, but calls for specific attention to the goals and consequences of that rhetoric. Some of the apparent cynicism, then–for example, the stories about the persuasive abilities of charlatans and quacks–is itself an examination of the rhetorical character of modeling inside "neutral model of scientific inquiry".
I have my own thoughts on how his perspective relates to the goals of other economists, in particular, the vast majority of the profession which is involved in empirical work for reasons that are not purely about persuasion or self interest, trying to figure out determinants of wages or predict financial crises, etc, a group that shows up curiously infrequently in the presented arguments. I suspect that centering the concerns of economics as an empirical science would demystify many of the tendencies he finds slightly "curious," viz, that it is their connection to measurement that makes some theories widely used and others largely ignored. But that seems not to be the target of the book, and in any case it is a topic he has written on at length elsewhere.
Spiegler is from the Rubinstein school of models as "fables" instead of tools for measurement or problem-solving, and much of the text can be read as a G.H. Hardy style plea to free from the shackles of having to be "useful" or "applied", but I think there's also something deeper there. Specifically, his critique of the applied theory style often involves, through analyses of popular models or modes of work in theory, illustrations of the way in which perceived usefulness hinges on superficial details that can obscure rather than illuminate underlying features of the logical argument behind the conclusions of the model. His critiques of global games, rational inattention, or beta-delta hyperbolic discounting, to list a few, could be seen as pure aestheticism, or inside-baseball point scoring, but there is also a hope for progress towards a more reliable and comprehensive science of human social reasoning.
Aside from this plea for "fundamental science", there is a theme that derives from his work on models as modes of communication, persuasion, and inquiry. In this context, the characterization of theory as rhetoric is not just dismissive, but calls for specific attention to the goals and consequences of that rhetoric. Some of the apparent cynicism, then–for example, the stories about the persuasive abilities of charlatans and quacks–is itself an examination of the rhetorical character of modeling inside "neutral model of scientific inquiry".
I have my own thoughts on how his perspective relates to the goals of other economists, in particular, the vast majority of the profession which is involved in empirical work for reasons that are not purely about persuasion or self interest, trying to figure out determinants of wages or predict financial crises, etc, a group that shows up curiously infrequently in the presented arguments. I suspect that centering the concerns of economics as an empirical science would demystify many of the tendencies he finds slightly "curious," viz, that it is their connection to measurement that makes some theories widely used and others largely ignored. But that seems not to be the target of the book, and in any case it is a topic he has written on at length elsewhere.
March 15, 2025
Spiegler almost gets to the point of recognising the futility of the theoretical modelling approach, but falls just short. His arguments on the "usefulness" are weak, making the entire book a bit unclear in its goals
Read
March 21, 2025Which way modern micro theorist? Ironical distancing from toy models or heavy metal applied models with an activist aftertaste?
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews