When I was in graduate school I lived among a large cadre of economists and had little sense of how we were viewed by non-economists. Since I always had respect for people in other disciplines, I assumed that they had the same respect for me. But once I started teaching at small liberal arts colleges, I began to realize that this was not true. Several years ago my colleague Eleanor Brown, an Economic professor at Pomona College was voted an honorary non- member of the Economics department by the Women's Studies faculty.
Many people seem to have little respect for economists.
They like to tell economist jokes. The answer is none. They just sit around in the dark waiting for the invisible hand to do it. Over a hundred years ago Francis Walker, the first president of the American Economic Association wrote an article about the low esteem people held for political economists, what economists used to be called in those days. He thought it was because of our devotion to theoretical abstractions and our tendency to ignore the importance of customs, laws and institutions.