How about looking at the issue in a social psychological perspective? What is it that most economists do for a living? What are they being trained for? What is their role in society? What is their peer group and work milieu? in Britain, a year after graduation in economics, of those who are in employment, about 50% have become business, finance sector and associated professionals, with a further 12% becoming commercial, industrial and public sector managers. In contrast only about 1% are to be found in the arts, design, culture and sport, another 1% in education and slightly less than 1% in social and welfare jobs.

Among other things this will powerfully determine the lived experience of economists, their social milieu and its motivations and the world view of their colleagues. The peer group of economists is to a large extent that of the corporate managerial elite. And that makes a difference to their theories in all sorts of ways.

Someone like Eleanor Ostrom who researched how natural commons worked was a very unusual person indeed (in fact she was not really an economist ). The idea that people might actually co-operate is barely theorised.

What is theorised is how the elite takes decisions – and to a large extent it is a theorisation of psychopathic behaviour, where the motivations and purposes of decision makers are guided by what psychologists call “extrinsic values”. These are values that are centred on external approval and rewards e.g. wealth, material success, concern about image, social status, prestige, social power and authority.

Social psychologists have studied people like this, who they describe as “marketing characters” .

“Marketing characters experience themselves as commodities whose value and meaning are externally determined.” Such characters have the following traits:
… eager to consume; wasteful of goods, disposing and replacing them frequently; having conventional tastes and views; uncritical of themselves or society, un-insightful; agreeing with the statement “having makes me more”; a tendency to publicise and promote themselves; experiencing themselves as a commodity whose value is determined by possessions and the opinions of others;
and with values portrayed in television advertisements. (Oliver James, Affluenza, 2007)

Studies show people like this are more likely to be “materialistic, conformist, unconcerned about ecology, expressive of anger, anxious and depressive.” A subsequent study by Saunders, again cited by James, explains how marketing characters:

… place little value on beauty, freedoms or inner harmony. Their main pursuits are social recognition, comfort, and having an exciting life. They are extremely individualistic in their social values and do not regard social equality as desirable. They compare themselves obsessively and enviously with others, always having to have more and better things than others, believing inequality to be man’s natural state. (James, Affluenza, 2007, p. 66)

Economists and economics is a theorisation of this value system as if is all human behaviour is of this type. But this is not true – what economists are describing what they themselves and their peer group are like. it is an illustration of this principle, that I first read in a book by the psychotherapist Dorothy Rowe>

“We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are”. (Sometimes attributed to the Talmud, but probably first written by Anais Nin

In this sense economics is not a science it is a belief system that simply asserts that everyone is motivated in this way., Given that economics represents a value system, it is not surprising what psychological experiments have found when comparing economic and non-economics students. The research in 1993 by Frank, Gilovich and Regan found that most people learn to be more co-operative as they get older – but that learning economics slows this process of social maturity. (Saka, 2011)

So, we could describe economics departments as departments for the promotion of anti social behaviour?.

Where then does this leave the main role of economists.? Here is a description of a US economist, Robert Nelson, who worked in the US government.

“If economists had any influence—which they sometimes did, if rarely decisive—it was seldom as literal “problem solvers”. Rather, the greatest influence of economists came through their defence of a set of values. Much of my own and other efforts of Interior (Ministry) economists were really to persuade others in the department to act in accordance with the economic value system, as
compared with other competing priorities and sets of values also represented within the ranks of the department.”

This is in a book in which Nelson compares economists to a priesthood and economics to a religion. (“Economics as a Religion” 2001)

It’s a good fit. In this quasi religion the role of original sin, THE problem facing humanity, is now seen to be “scarcity” and the job in hand is to overcome with a new set of quasi virtues – efficiency, economic growth, technological innovation brought about by creatively disruptive entrepreneurs. And the role of economist is that of a quasi priesthood – and what priests do is explain and defend orthodoxy for a value system that is essentially anti social (but hidden behind a plausible narrative)

There is nothing scientific about this and in my book I show where these ideas came from and contrast them with ideas held in other societies – particularly indigenous societies who manage their relationships with each other and with and in their eco-systems.

All this and more is explored in chapter 2 of my book Credo which is available for download from http://www.credoeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/credo.pdf

Probably an old Marxist dinosaur as George Lukacs should be read again.

One quibble. The hammer line is often spoken as “if you ARE a hammer everything looks like a nail.”