ABSTRACT
We argue that both the ‘economics-made-fun’ and the ‘economists-can-be-funny’ should be taken seriously – though we prefer to rename the latter genre ‘economics-madefun-of’ to distinguish it from the economists putting on a funny hat, or pulling a weird face. We claim both genres servewell in redefining economics. Together they offer an interesting methodology to seewhere economics is fruitfully exploring new areas, andwhere it is going astray. But ‘economics-made-fun’ and ‘economics-made-fun-of’ also help in definingwhat it means, or should mean, to be an economist. We argue that ‘fun’ lies at the heart of the controversy about the identity of economists, and we draw from recent work by Steven Shapin on the identity of natural scientists in the twentieth century to clarify this.
