In a stunning victory over the Republican incumbent House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Economics professor(!) Dr. Dave Brat will face off against Sociology professor Democrat Dr. Jack Trammell in November.
While the 7th district in Virginia certainly leans Republican, Brat may have a tough go of it. Why? The language problem. The language of sociology is probably better aligned with the typical voter.
In the classic piece “The Economics/Sociology Phrase Book”, Jeffrey A. Smith and Kermit Daniel outline the difference between the two disciplines.
To best prepare for the Brat vs Trammell debate, Read the whole thing. I provide an abridged version below. A few relevant links are provided, (including a mea culpa, evidence of my own failure to resist non-economic thinking)
Section I: Sociology to Economics
| Sociological Term or Phrase | Economics Term or Phrase |
|---|---|
| rational behavior | The use of decision rules based on explicit mathematical calculation, combined with a utility function in which monetary wealth is the only argument. |
| need | want |
| different value orientations | laziness |
| is correlated with | is correlated with |
| determines | is correlated with |
| is caused by | is correlated with |
| structural | institutional |
| endogenous | endogenous |
| exogenous | endogenous |
| position in the urban hierarchy | what size town you live in |
| causal nexus | general equilibrium |
| exploitation | contract |
| discrimination | wage differential |
| low wage jobs | low productivity workers |
| corporate elite | high productivity workers |
| patriarchy (I) | sexual division of labor based on technological differences |
| patriarchy (II) | family |
| bourgeois sexual privatism | monogamy |
| non-normative family arrangements | single motherhood |
| model (I) | explanation |
| model (II) | diagram involving circles and arrows |
| Marxist | Marxist |
| socialist | Marxist |
| communist | Marxist |
| Communist | Marxist |
| government | state |
| profit maximization | revenue maximization |
| profit maximizing behavior | discrimination |
| monopolist | large firm |
| unemployment | leisure |
| labor force detachment | leisure |
| macroeconomics | Keynesian demand management |
| conservative macroeconomics | neoclassical economics |
| neoclassical economics | economics |
| Marxist economics | sociology |
Section II: Economics to Sociology
| Economics Term or Phrase | Sociological Term or Phrase |
|---|---|
| elasticity | zero |
| information costs | changing tastes |
| technological change | changing tastes |
| relative price change | changing tastes |
| structural | absurd mathematical abstraction |
| economics | ex post rationalization for maintaining current institutional arrangements |
| Castro | Fidel |
| dictator | leader |
Section III: My Addition
| Economics Term or Phrase | Sociological Term or Phrase |
|---|---|
| Employer | Monopsonist |
2 responses so far ↓
1 Steve Roth // Jun 11, 2014 at 4:08 pm
Wow! That’s interesting. The example pointed to as the prototypical example of rationalist economics says that downward redistribution makes us all more prosperous, while upward redistribution impoverishes us all, by comparison. Definitely worth remembering that!
2 Steve Broback // Nov 28, 2014 at 5:25 pm
#wordsalad
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