So Who Is J.W. Mason?

 

So, who's J.W.Mason? I didn't know, so I looked him up. Academics do this with Google Scholar. He's an assistant professor with quite a few recent publications, and he is getting cited for them. He has one publication at a big mainstream journal (AEJ:M). He's currently at CUNY. He labels himself as heterodox.

He blogs at J.W.Mason, and there's an about page with more details there. He got his Ph.D. from U. Mass-Amherst. He looks like an up and comer in the non-neo-classical-economics world.

He's also on the staff and has published through a think tank called the Roosevelt Institute. Thinks tanks are a tough thing to figure out as an academic. On the one hand they publish interesting stuff. On the other hand, it's more advertised through the press than peer-reviewed. Most think tanks are funded through private and public grants. It's well known that granting organizations tend to be further to the political left than the general public, rather like the legacy media and academia. So my view of this is that it's typical of someone who calls themself heterodox, but only indicative of accessible scholarship rather than innovative scholarship.