Who are the favorite economic thinkers, journals, and blogs?

The piece, by Daniel Klein, et.al., has this abstract:

A sample of 299 U.S. economics professors, presumably random, responded to our survey which asked favorites in the following areas: Economic thinkers (pre-twentieth century, twentieth century now deceased, living age 60 or older, living under age 60), economics journals, and economics blogs. First-place positions as favorite economist in their respective categories are Adam Smith (by far), John Maynard Keynes followed closely by Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, and Paul Krugman. For journals, the leaders are American Economic Review and Journal of Economic Perspectives. For blogs, the leaders are Greg Mankiw followed closely by Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok). The survey also asked party-voting and 17 policy-view questions, and we relate the political variables of respondents to their choice of favorites.

The favorite twentieth century economists are Keynes, Friedman, Samuelson, and Hayek, in that order.  Kenneth Arrow doesn’t do as well as he should, though he comes in second, after Gary Becker, in the category, favorite living economists, sixty years or older.

As for favorite living economists, under age sixty, Paul Krugman wins by a long mile, followed by Greg Mankiw, then Acemoglu, Levitt, and David Card.  I do not deserve my position at #16, but thanks if you voted for me!  Scroll to p.13 for that list.

On p.14 there is a fascinating chart about the political orientations of the voters for various favorite economists.  Krugman for instance is more popular among left-wing economists.

The votes for favorite journal are on p.16, no surprises there.  p.17 has the favorite blogs chart.  Krugman and DeLong are third and fourth, after Mankiw and MR.

It is a fascinating paper which says much about our profession.

That is all from the latest issue of Econ Journal Watch, the link to the whole issue is here.  Here is a good piece about the embarrassment of Richard T. Ely.

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