The North Atlantic Divide of researching/teaching Economics

[buritobr]

I read an article written in 1996 about the diferences between North America and Europe concerning researching and teaching Economics.

In North America
> A big and single labor market for professors and researchers, from Florida to Alaska. Same language.
> No employment stability. Even in the state universities, researchers and professor are not state servants.
> Incentives to have a big number of articles published in academic journals, to have a big number of quotations. Publish or perish. Payment is related to publications and not to career, experience. That´s why, there are many young economists who are top economists
> Focus on abstract theory and large use of mathematics. Departments of Economics don't have concern about issues like Local Development. There are economics working with these issues in other departments of the universities.
> High degree of especialization. A researcher studies only labor economics, or only international economics, or only financial markets, or only microeconomics, or only macroeconomics
> Use of recent textbooks and recent articles in the graduation in Economics in the universities. No interest on classic books in Economics.

Europe
> Many labor markets. Language barriers and other barriers too.
> Employment stability. Researchers and professors are state servants.
> Researchers/professors have bigger wages and bigger recognition when they are in the top of the career(= when they are old)
> Since researchers are not under pressure to write many articles, they can work on broad topics, they can be more multidisciplinary, they can write books
> The study of Economics has more connections with History, Sociology, Political Science and Philosophy
> Less especialization. The same professor can teach Microeconomics, Macroeconomics etc
> Many departments of Economics study local development issues, and they are close to the governments
> Many presidents and prime ministers have degree in Economics. Unlike in the USA, when even many secretaries of Treasury are not economists.

Are these diferences still relevant 20 years later?

[buritobr]

In the end of the 1996 article, the author told that some convergence was already going on. European universities were already starting to use English, to increase researchers' mobility. European journals published in English were already replacing national journals published in the national languages. American economists were increasing their interest for History.