RIPE Best Article Award

RIPE Best Article Award: Associate Professor Oddný Helgadóttir is the recipient of the inaugural Best Article Award in Review of International Political Economy (RIPE) journal for her article “How to make a super-model: professional incentives and the birth of contemporary macroeconomics”, published in v. 30, issue 1, 2023. The award committee noted: “The article retells the rapid rise of real business cycle theory (RBC) in economics as a story of professional competition. It pushes the methodological boundaries of IPE by providing an accomplished illustration of how the sociology of professions and networks can be incorporated in IPE analysis. Moreover, by revisiting this crucial shift in modern macroeconomic theory, it provides a succinct analysis of how a rather technical concept can have significant real world implications, paving the way for the neoliberal turn in economic policymaking”.

This article talks about how modern macroeconomics has changed from the traditional Keynesian approach after World War II. It argues that a new type of modeling called Real Business Cycles (RBC) played a big role in this shift and still dominates mainstream macroeconomics today. The article explains that RBC gained popularity because it helped individual economists advance their careers, even though it faced resistance from established ideas. Understanding this shift is important because it changed what was considered acceptable in the field of economics. The old Keynesian approach was seen as outdated and unscientific, while the new models laid the foundation for the type of economics we see today, often associated with neoliberalism. The article suggests that as we face new economic challenges, it's worth questioning whether we'll see another big change in how economists approach their work. Without a new, easy-to-use modeling method, it's unlikely. In the meantime, there's a growing divide between academic theories and real-world policy, leaving room for experimentation in how policies are made and implemented.

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