Russian Economists Without Borders

Last week, on the New Economic School professors’ blog on Slon.ru, I wrote a list of Russian academic economists who could help the government evaluate the anti-crisis programs implemented by the other Group of 20 members. The G20 agreement stipulated a “peer review” for national policies. Of course, I do not believe evaluating economic policies is the exclusive province of academics, but without them the quality of peer review would be low.

But what is the difference between an academic working in a particular branch of knowledge and a specialist who applies that knowledge in the field? The simplest answer is that the “target audience” for an academic scholar is his colleagues — that is, other scholars. However talented an investment banker might be (and they are often the top graduates of the best universities in the world), the end users of their services are primarily the bank’s management, traders, clients and in last place, other financial analysts. The same is true of the editor of a newspaper’s financial section or a columnist. They write for the sake of their readers, and not for their professional colleagues.

Of course, the fact that someone writes an article or book for his colleagues does not necessarily make that person a true scholar. I consider the “qualification” for an economist to be that he or she should be published in a respected academic publication — either a book with a major  publisher or an article in an international journal. My criteria may seem subjective, particularly for those who are not published in these publications, but subjective criteria are not such a big problem in academia as generally thought. It would be great if other lists of candidates were also compiled so that a discussion could be held regarding the concrete work of this or that economist. Such a discourse typically allows the participants to quickly determine a person’s academic qualifications.

But for me, the most difficult question I faced when composing my list was: What actually is a “Russian economist” anyway? Of course, one could choose from among the best academic economists in the world, but then none of the economists working in Russia would be included on the list. To make matters simpler, I considered every economist who had been born anywhere on the territory of the former Soviet Union as a “Russian economist,” regardless of where they currently live and work.

But I now have second thoughts, and the criteria for “Russian” should be different. After all, science — whether it is mathematics, physics or economics — knows no national borders. The educational system, however, does. This is especially true of grammar school, but it also applies to higher education as well. Both are very much connected with their home countries. Does that mean that somebody who works in a supranational field such as science, but who teaches in Russia, could also be considered a Russian economist? Using that criterion, six names can be added to my list: Olivier Bertrand at St. Petersburg State University, Paul Dower at the New Economic School in Moscow, Dean Fantazzini at Moscow State University and Stanimir Morfov, Fabian Slonimczyk and Carsten Sprenger at the Higher School of Economics. Is that so few?

Konstantin Sonin, a visiting professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, is a professor at the New Economic School in Moscow and a columnist for Vedomosti.