I was talking to an economics Assistant Professor today frustrated with the profession. A few years into his job and he's struggling with the last mile of his papers & trying to get them published in the right places. He said it'll get better. The problem: he's only partly right.
The best part of our profession is that you're completely autonomous and you get to work on a bunch of different exciting projects. You learn a lot over time, both from the papers and from all the tacit knowledge you get from being involved in them.
The other amazing thing is that you're surrounded by ridiculously smart colleagues who are talented in so many ways, and it sharpens you. It's like a big intellectual whetstone every day.
The obvious problem is that being sharpened against an intellectual whetstone all the time is COMPLETELY EXHAUSTING and sometimes demoralizing.
But to me, the core problem with the econ academic profession is that there's been a massive increase in the number of economists doing great work, yet we remain too fixated on "top 5" journal publications. Worse, the # of paper slots has not kept up with supply of good work.
The VERY ironic thing is that economists, more than anyone else, should understand the effects of supply shocks, not to mention the RIDICULOUSLY diminishing returns to investment in the last miles of our papers that we all seem to expect of one another.
We should also understand collective action problems and the fact that we're in an equilibrium that is producing great work, but I think is terrible for our collective mental health and productivity (see diminishing returns to last miles, above!)
At the end of the day, every human being is just a status-seeking chimpanzee. And we are status-seeking chimpanzees where a main thing that gives us status and validation has amazing diminishing marginal returns and a weird discontinuity at the "top 5"
May 13, 2026 · 1:17 PM UTC
What's even worse is that, like many academic professions, we are status-seeking not relative to our local group of 30 chimps, but to every chimp in the freaking world. You generally know where you stand in the global pecking order, which is insane.
If you were the lead partner at an accounting firm or you worked in a corporation or NGO, your reference group for self-validation wouldn't be every manager on the planet. You'd be seeking validation from a smaller group with a more diverse array of things granting status/support
I see no easy solution to this mess, but maybe it helps to call it out once in a while.
And to encourage everyone to try, each of us, to learn to seek esteem and validation in healthier ways.
I guess we tenured professors could do a "it gets better" video. Because it does get better once tenure gets granted. And you can find your own little group of chimps and get yourself out of the stressful global line.
But in my experience, you never really get out of the global line of chimps seeking status along the old insane way. We are too socialized by the time we get tenure to completely escape it. So we keep grooming the chimp slightly above us. Picking their vermin out of their hair.
