The Research Assessment Exercise, the state and the dominance of mainstream economics in British universities

Abstract

In previous research on the impact of the Research Assessment Exercise on heterodox economics and heterodox economists in the UK, the author concluded that reliance on Diamond List journals to rank departments would drive economic departments to discriminate positively in terms of their hiring, promotion and research strategies in favour of mainstream economists and their research, in order to maintain or improve their ranking. As a consequence, the author predicted there would be no or only a token presence of heterodox economists in an increasing number of departments. Whether the conclusions still hold and the predictions materialise is the subject of the paper.