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Why do academics oppose the market economy? Sophistication and perception of market failures

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French Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

Rejection of the market economy is widespread in academia. This fact has often been observed, but rarely explained. Using a large survey on French academics which replicates questions used in international surveys, this article confirms that French academics are hostile to market economy principles in comparison with the French population. Two explanations are tested: the first posits that academics—as knowledge providers—are likely to experience a “public good” market failure. Their rejection of the market economy is thus linked to their specific positioning vis-à-vis the market economy itself. The second hypothesis assumes that academics are not involved in market activities. Consequently, this lack of familiarity leads academics to be more suspicious towards an institution they barely experience. Both hypotheses are consistent with our data.

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Notes

  1. In fact, it has been several times suggested—in France see Boudon (2004), for example—but it has been never empirically tested.

  2. This is remarkable that the individual data provide measure about direct and indirect income from scientific activities, whereas the aggregated data by fields only offer measure about the direct income.

  3. http://academicsopinions.wordpress.com/.

  4. The National Council of Universities (Conseil National des Universités, CNU) is an administrative national elected institution which organizes the university system at national level.

  5. The European Values Study is an international survey that takes place every 9 years. In 2008, it contained 3,071 responses for France. For more details, see http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/evs/surveys/survey-2008.html.

  6. Except for the first question, the others are only included in the French part of the 2008 EVS, which means the three other questions are not displayed in the rest of the nations involved in the EVS.

  7. The fields are identified following usual distinction and are detailed in Fig. 5.

  8. This is the cluster correction method; for details, see Cameron and Trivedi (2005).

  9. This outcome does not depend on the simultaneous introduction of the two variables within the model since if we drop one of those from the estimate, the outcome does not change.

  10. The variable is detailed in appendix table where the linguistics is the most Marxist discipline, whereas the other social science that includes theology is the least according to this measure.

  11. Given the small proportion of respondents choosing the market solution to the question (3 per cent), we also carry out a complementary log–log regression. The results are quite similar to those with the standard logit. The detailed outcomes can be obtained upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would thank Nicolas Eber, Nicolas Sauger and Pierre Bréchon for their help on the survey design and Pierre-Guillaume Méon for fruitful discussion. Any errors remain ours.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lille, LEM (UMR 9221), Lille, France

    Abel François

  2. UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Cal Le Gall

  3. Sciences Po Grenoble (PACTE), Univ. Grenoble-Alpes, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, France

    Raul Magni Berton

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  1. Abel François
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  2. Cal Le Gall
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  3. Raul Magni Berton
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Correspondence to Abel François.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 5, 6 and 7.

Table 5 Estimated cut-off of the estimations presented in Table 2
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Table 6 Marxist influence by research domain
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Table 7 Estimated cut-off of the estimations presented in Table 3
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François, A., Le Gall, C. & Magni Berton, R. Why do academics oppose the market economy? Sophistication and perception of market failures. Fr Polit 17, 228–256 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41253-019-00088-4

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