Economists are a strange tribe. They prefer to differentiate themselves from other social sciences by analyzing a fundamental social activity – production and consumption of goods and services via the institutions of markets and money – by means of sciences. This undertaking was extremely successful. Only students who can demonstrate a high proficiency in the usage of basic tools of science, mainly of the higher echelons of mathematics, are allowed to join the tribe. Moreover, some of the most basic tools of economics have gained access to other social sciences, in particular into political science, were they are often used in even more trivial ways then in economics. All this is the more astonishing as the actual societal relevance of the profession, on average, is relatively low.

And yet economists are ubiquitous. Only the law professions seems to be more influential in advising politics about the right actions to take. The ability of any individual economist’s voice must not be closely tied to the academic reputation of the person in question. Some voices are more contoured then others, and the public at large as well as the political world seem to be rather selective. Economists have become rather inventive over the years to make their voices influential. Some have become regular commentators in media outlets; others have become prominent bloggers; and others turned to writing bestsellers besides their more cryptic academic writings. Only a few made it to global stars so far. However, it seems that each country has its national champions who dominate national debates. In Germany this crown goes to Hans-Werner Sinn (HWS) , a neoclassical academic who heads the info -Institute located in Munich. Full caveat. I met HWS as a very young economics student at the University of Mannheim where he was carrying the briefcase of his former chair through the floors of A5. Since. he made a quite steep career. Over the last twenty years or so there seems to be no important (and sometimes unimportant) economic debate in Germany without his contributions; as a matter of fact, often it is him who kick-started those debates. No small feast.

In a recent reply to a post by Wolfgang Münchau, the Eurozone expert commentator of Financial Times, Sinn made the somehow astounding statement that models offered by Neo-Keynesianimus and other ‘mega-models’ not only would be since decades out of fashion on the side of mainstream economics but also would be absolutely useless in terms of policy relevance. This may well be true, and such a statement is no surprise given that it comes from a firm neoclassical scholar. What was more surprising to me was his follow-up statement  about the successful alternative to macro models, namely small micro-founded models that only focus on certain aspects of the causation-effect-chain. Again, that is not new at all; somehow new is the implication for economists who still want to analyze macroeconomic processes. According to Sinn it is the job of the policy relevant economist to connect those micr-founded partial models by means of verbal-analytical procedures in order to get macroeconomic real;event outcomes. Latter, I guess, means to free those small models from their mathematical constraints. Still, how to move from micro to macro is his secret. It is well-known but not well-established that there is no sound way to logically move from micro modelling to macro, not least because latter is not a simple aggregation of the micro spheres. It is even less established that the macroeconomy is a non-linear system with configurations in time and space. Microeconomic models, I dare to say, do actually not contribute a lot to the understanding of the (macro)economy.



This restriction is neither a hindrance for economists like Sinn nor for the media and the policy advisory circus to show professional competence by happily commenting to all sorts of macroeconomic developments. If one is asking where those attitudes and sentiments are coming from  then it needs quite a deep digging. Such a digging goes far beyond Sinn and friends. In a recent contribution Daniel Hirschman & Elizabeth Popp Berman where presenting a analysis on the ‘political effects of economics’ (Socio-Economic Review,12, 2014) and suggested to identify three modes of influence: Professional authority, institutional position, and cognitive infrastructure. It would need an research project of its own  to use this template for an analysis of the economics-public landscape in Germany. It seems obvious, though, that Sinn and friends enjoy an enormous level of professional authority that comes by status. Germany is one of the few counties in the OECD where the epistemic community of economists is organized like cartel. This starts from hiring practices and does not end with closed syllabi of economists. Finally, there is no doubt that the cognitive infrastructure in Germany  favours the kind of technical analysis that is presented by economists like Sinn, and politician turned economists like Lucke (head of the Alternative for Germany, a right of the centre party that is being presented by the media as the party of professors) who have the ability to present economic problems like problems of physics. This supply meets strong demand on the side of the public, not least due to the still lasting German tradition of a hunger for authority and expertise.