Was there a transformation in economic ideology between 1960 and 2000?

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we examine whether or not there has been a change in economic ideology in the late twentieth century. To conduct the analysis, we first identified the most influential economists, as determined by citation analysis. Next, we divided the database into four decades (1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s) and ranked the authors according to their citation counts. We examined the articles and classified each of the top 50- and top 10-cited authors, by both definitions, as “free market,” “interventionist,” or “methodological.” We argue that the economics profession has produced more research that draws pro-free-market conclusions over the last four decades of the twentieth century.