Specialization, fragmentation, and pluralism in economics

This paper investigates whether specialisation in research is causing economics to become an increasingly fragmented and diverse discipline with a continually rising number of niche-based research programmes and a declining role for dominant cross-science research programmes. It opens by framing the issue in terms of centrifugal and centripetal forces operating on research in economics, and then distinguishes descriptive from normative pluralism. It reviews recent research regarding the JEL code and economics’ J. B. Clark Award that points towards rising specialisation and fragmentation of research in economics. It then reviews five related arguments that might explain increasing specialisation and fragmentation in economics: (i) Smith’s early division of labour view, (ii) Kuhn’s later thinking about the importance of specialisation, (iii) Heiner’s behavioral burden of knowledge argument, (iv) Ross’s innovation-diffusion analysis and Arthur’s theory of technological change as determinants of speci...