iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 28/09/2026

It's a first step, and we'd really like feedback. The journal is paywalled, but the preprint is free here: hal.science/hal-05431080

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 28/09/2026

Third, the paper isn't the only output. We built an app to explore the results, check our story against the data, or dig into your own topic: game theory, institutionalists, the marginalist controversy… 019adac8-81d4-aa0e-808c-08861c261fd2.share.connect.posit.cloud

First page of the companion act, showing a network of the different clusters on the left pane. The right pane gives detail on the clusters

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 28/09/2026

We then grouped those sentences using sentence embeddings and grouped articles by what they cite, and compared both with what historians of economics have already written.

Temporal evolution of sentence clusters discussing rationality in economics journals (1900–2009). This figure is similar to Figure 7 but with a different layout to emphasize the temporal dimension. In this visualisation, we group clusters by decade
along the x-axis (1900–1919, 1920–1929, … , 2000–2009) and group thematically similar
clusters along the y-axis, making it easier to follow how semantic clusters evolve over
time.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 28/09/2026

Second, following one concept, "rationality," over more than a century. The word didn't mean the same thing in 1910 and in 2000, so instead of using one fixed definition, we used a language model to capture how it was used year by year, and pulled out the sentences closest to that.

Zoom on the construction of the representative vector of rationality for year 1910 and how it is used to build a corpus (here the sentences-corpus). Each embeddings from 1905 to 1915 are average into a year centroid (1910). This leads to use cosine similarity to find the 1910 sentences closest to the representative vector.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 28/09/2026

A corpus like this has its biases: mostly Anglo-American journals (the best digitized ones), no books, and not much citation data before 1960. We tried to be transparent about that.

The first visualisation shows the exponential trend in the number of documents in the database. The second trend shows the dominance of English articles from the 1940s on, with a diminishing proportion of Italian, German and French

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 28/09/2026

First, the data. No provider has full texts of economics articles going back to 1900 in one place, so we pieced them together from JSTOR, Elsevier and ISTEX, and matched them with Web of Science to get citations. We ended up with about 260,000 articles and 61 million sentences.

General representation of the method used in the article, with three sources: JSTOR, Elsevier and ISTEX, merged and cleaned, leading to the meta-corpus to which is added citation data from web of science.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 11/09/2026

Interesting FT chart: Central banks have leaned hard on 'wage growth leads to inflation' in communication & as policy channel. But data since the 1980s tells a messier story: quarters with hotter wage growth are followed by lower core PCE inflation a year later, not higher www.ft.com/content/a525...

Scatter plot titled 'Warsh was right,' showing ECI wage growth (x-axis, 1% to 9%) plotted against the change in core PCE inflation over the following year (y-axis, -2 to 4 percentage points). Quarterly data since 1981. Points show a negative trend: a downward-sloping line indicates that higher wage growth quarters tend to be followed by lower future inflation change, not higher. Data is scattered widely around the trend line. Source: Haver Analytics, via Financial Times.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 04/09/2026

Il vous reste 2 semaines pour proposer une session thématique pour le congrès de l'ABSP du 19 au 21 mai 2027, à Bruxelles et Louvain-la-Neuve Plus d'informations ➡️ absp.be/actualites/l... Le formulaire pour soumettre ➡️ framaforms.org/proposition-...

Congrès triennal de l'ABSP du 19 au 21 mai.
Démocraties sous pression - Transformations, menaces et renouveaux du politique et de la science politique

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 22/07/2026

As usual, there are also several book reviews, and notably an essay by Raphaël Fèvre on Duncan Kelly's last book, Worlds of Wartime.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 22/06/2026

Cool data visualization app... for frightening results. showyourstripes.info/b/europe/bel...

Bars of above and below average temperature in Brussels. Most year are above average temperature from the 1980s onwards

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 01/06/2026

What made "European" economic research unique between the 1980s & 2010s? Some initial results based on topic-modeling: ▶️ Labor markets (wages, unemployment) & experimental econ dominated among Europe-affiliated authors ▶️ European journals (EER, JEEA) leaned into international economics #rstats

Each axis is an estimated difference in topic prevalence: positive x means more prevalent in papers with Europe-only vs US-only affiliations, and positive y means more prevalent in European journals (EER, JEEA) vs. US top journals (AER, QJE, JPE). Topic farther from 0 have stronger contrasts, while point color indicates whether the contrast is statistically significant.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 23/04/2026

After spending the week trying to build bridges between JSTOR, Elsevier, Scopus, Econlit, and OpenAlex to build a large database of economics articles with @thomasdelcey.bsky.social ...

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 16/04/2026

The point is not to criticise and I think these initiatives to ensure transparency in the use of LLMs for research are important... but this should also prompt us, as researchers, to reflect on our practices when the carbon footprint of writing a paper is comparable to flying from Paris to Berlin...

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 15/04/2026

"Who are the Euro Crypto Bros?" @alphaville.ft.com fun article: www.ft.com/content/5c56... Based on ECB staff working paper: www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpw...

Share of generations (Gen Z, Millenials, Gen X, Boomers...) using crypto in various European countries. Gen Z first in most countries, but Millenials first for Belgium or Slovakia.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 02/04/2026

Would be a nice thing indeed to have our publications automatically added (with the agreement of the user) to the @sifa.id profile, after connecting our profile to @orcid.org. There is also an option on the @orcid.org to put forward "featured works". Perhaps this could also be used by sifa.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 23/03/2026

Happy to launch the new website of the Political Economy Working Group in Belgium! politicaleconomy.be 🔍 Meet the team 📚 Browse publications 🔬 Explore projects 📅 Stay tuned for events The website is built with @rstats and @quarto.org. It is open source: codeberg.org/agoutsmedt/e...

The home page of the website of the Political Economy Working Group in Belgium

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 20/03/2026

Also comes with a nice online application to explore the results: 019a10aa-000d-6239-b6d1-154738949fe8.share.connect.posit.cloud

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 20/03/2026

New paper by @ncamilotto.bsky.social on the history of "The Trust Game" hal.science/hal-05556967 How a simple experiment became a battleground for 2 clashing visions? Used in experimental econ to measure trust for policy vs. used in behavioral econ to refine theories of social preferences

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 04/03/2026

📢 With @tomduterme.bsky.social & Ariane Gemander, we’re pleased to invite you to the 6th workshop of the Belgian Political Economy Working Group on Friday, June 19, 2026, at ICHEC Brussels. 📆 Abstract proposals due by April 10 -- Email us.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 18/02/2026

Interesting graph from www.ft.com/content/0ae2... From this perspective, high fertility and “baby booms” put as much pressure on public finances & working-age population as ageing does Today, dependency ratio is low. In a few decades, it could return to 1970s level. Hardly an unprecedented situation

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 16/02/2026

You can also observe this through the increasing use of math in textbooks:

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 16/02/2026

Some snapshots from ongoing work with @cleocz.bsky.social & Liu Li: Looking at labor economics textbooks over time, you see the discipline shift in the 1970s. Earlier textbooks revolve around industrial relations & trade unions. Later ones centre on labor markets & human capital.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 20/01/2026

Digging into the JEEA special issue below, I was wondering if anyone knows of articles, reports, or resources on the history of economic journal ranking? When and how academic/public institutions began ranking journals?

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 05/01/2026

There’s also an open-source interactive app built with @rshiny.bsky.social to explore the results: 019adac8-81d4-aa0e-808c-08861c261fd2.share.connect.posit.cloud (limited users) We would be very happy to receive comments, feedback, or suggestions. #rstats

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 05/01/2026

Methodologically, we combine: ➡️ large language model–based sentence embeddings, ➡️ bibliometric and network analysis, ➡️ unsupervised clustering techniques, to track both semantic shifts (how rationality is discussed) and intellectual structures (how ideas circulate through citations).

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 05/01/2026

New working paper with Thomas Delcey and Alexandre Truc: “One Sentence at a Time: A Quantitative History of Rationality in Economic Thought” ▶️ osf.io/preprints/so... We study how rationality changes in economics over the long 20th century using ~290000 journal articles (1900–2009) #rstats #EconSky

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 01/10/2025

📢 Call for Papers — 5th Political Economy Working Group Workshop 🗓️ 30 Jan 2026, Université Saint-Louis Bruxelles The workshop is divided into two parts: Morning: PhD research presentations. Afternoon: open to all, concluding with @benbraun.bsky.social. Abstracts due 1 Dec 2025 All details below:

The Political Economy working group is pleased to invite you to a workshop on Friday, 30 January, 2026, at the Université Saint-Louis - Bruxelles. Founded during the ABSP Congress in February 2024, this group aims to contribute to the advancement and growth of the field of political economy in Belgium.

The workshop will be divided into two parts:
The morning session is open to all PhD students wishing to present the progress of their research, whether in the form of a thesis project, an article or a chapter. Each PhD student will have 40 to 50 minutes for discussion with attending researchers.
The afternoon session is open to all researchers interested in presenting a publication or work-in progress related to the various key themes driving our Political Economy Working Group: European governance, financial regulation, central banks policies and communication, the political economy of the green transition, the role of States in a globalized and financialized world, among others.
Contributions are welcome in either French or English. Presentations should generally be delivered in English.
Next steps:
To propose a presentation for the morning or afternoon sessions, send a title and abstract of no more than 400 words to aurelien.goutsmedt[at]uclouvain.be and zsuzsanna.szeredi[at]uclouvain.be by December 1, 2025. If you wish to present in the PhD morning session, please indicate this clearly in your submission.
Notification of acceptance will be sent by December 19, 2025.
Manuscripts (working papers, chapters or drafts) will be requested by January 16, 2025, in order to give discussants and other participants sufficient time to prepare. We recommend manuscripts of between 5,000 to 10,000 words.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 22/09/2025

Fresh issue of Œconomia online! In Varia: feminist approaches in history of economics, Medieval Thought & Schumpeter. In Book Reviews: Phelps’s memoirs, Slobodian/Plehwe on Market Civilizations, French and European macro modeling, etc Full content here 👉 journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/18...

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 16/09/2025

A new academic year begins for Oeconomia (journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/) with a renewed team of editors for the book review section. Welcome to the new editors - I look forward to working with them! If you’d like to submit a book review or a proposal, feel free to contact me.

Aurélien Goutsmedt, UC Louvain et ICHEC, BELGIQUE, éditeur en chef

Maria Bach, Université de Lausanne, SUISSE

Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, London School of Economics and Political Science, ROYAUME UNI

Nathanael Colin-Jaeger, Université Catholique de Lille, FRANCE

Tom Duterme, ICHEC Brussels Management, BELGIQUE

David Gindis, University of Warwick, ROYAUME UNI

Claire Silvant, Université Lumière Lyon 2, FRANCE

Sarah Small, University of Utah, USA

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 16/09/2025

The special section on Central Bank Scientization in @finandsoc.bsky.social is now official out in Volume 11, Issue 2. Read all the papers here ➡️ www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Many thanks to @aminsamman.bsky.social and Nathan Coombs for their support in the editorial process.

Content of the special section on Central Bank Scientization:
Special section: Central bank scientization

Redefining scientization: Central banks between science and politics
Aurélien Goutsmedt, Francesco Sergi

Not a steamroller, a 3D process: Scientization at the Bank of England
Aurélien Goutsmedt, Francesco Sergi, François Claveau, Clément Fontan

From technical to academic central banking: The scientization of the Banque de France
Maxence Dutilleul

Scientization of central bank governance: A global study of governors’ biographies, 2000–2020
Aykiz Dogan, Frédéric Lebaron

Scientization: A self-critical afterthought
Martin Marcussen

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 02/06/2025

What do economists do in central banks? How did they come to play such a central role? We're excited to share the first draft of a Cambridge University Press Elements book project on how economists became key figures in central banking over the twentieth century. ▶️ osf.io/preprints/so...

Economists, Economic Knowledge, and

Central Banks

Aurélien Goutsmedt

UCLouvain, ISPOLE; ICHEC Brussels

Francesco Sergi

Université Paris Est Créteil, LIPHA

Juan Acosta

Universidad del Valle

Abstract

What do economists do in central banks? Why do central banks hire economists? This book investigates the evolving role of economists and economic knowledge within central banks, arguing that their current centrality is neither self-evident nor historically inevitable. While the presence and influence of economists in central banks today may seem natural, this book shows that it is the result of a complex, gradual, and uneven historical process shaped by institutional structures, disciplinary transformations, and shifting relationships between science and policy. Drawing on a rich but dispersed body of literature, the book traces how economists progressively gained authority through the establishment of statistics departments, the adoption of macroeconometric models, and the emergence of a shared

cognitive infrastructure between academia and central banks. Rather than focusing on individuals or doctrines, it examines general trends and institutional shifts across a series of national case studies to show how central banks function as boundary organizations, at the intersection of policy and science

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 19/05/2025

🎉 All the contributions to @finandsoc.bsky.social special section on the “Scientization of Central Banks” are now online! 👉 shorturl.at/Izq9r In the intro with Francesco Sergi, we refine the concept of scientization along 3 key dimensions 🔹 Policymaking 🔹 Contributory 🔹 Legitimizing

Article: Redefining scientization: Central banks between science and politics

This article introduces a new conceptual framework for examining the transformation of central banks’ activities at the intersection of science and politics. It builds on the results of the contributions gathered in this special section on the scientization of central banking, to which this article also provides an introduction. We start with an analysis of Martin Marcussen’s concept of ‘scientization’, originally formulated to describe the changes within central banks since the 2000s. After highlighting how Marcussen’s concept has raised different interpretations, we broaden our scope to examine how ‘scientization’ is applied in the wider social sciences, extending beyond the study of central banks. This brings to the fore two ideas: scientization as ‘boundary work’ (redrawing the line between ‘science’ and ‘non-science’) happening both in the public-facing (‘frontstage’) and internal (‘backstage’) activities of organizations. Finally, we suggest how these two ideas can be used to reinterpret ‘scientization’ of central banks as the emergence of central banks as ‘boundary organizations’. This reframing allows us to untangle and clarify the phenomena previously conflated under the original concept of scientization, offering a more coherent framework for ongoing research on central banks.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 13/05/2025

The third paper of the special section on the "Scientization of Central Banks" is now online in @finandsoc.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1017/fas.... Aykiz dogan & Frédéric Lebaron propose a sociological approach to scientisation, by building and analysing a prosopographic database of central bankers

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 12/05/2025

For those in the Edinburgh area, Francesco Sergi and I will present Friday our special section on the "Scientization of Central Banks", soon to be published in @finandsoc.bsky.social Thanks to Nathan Coombs and the SKAPE center for inviting us. More info ➡️ www.skape.ed.ac.uk/events/

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 22/04/2025

Scientization is often used in research on central banks—but what does it really mean? We break it down into 3 dimensions: contributory, policymaking and legitimizing scientizations. We trace the BoE's contributiory scientization (ie academic knowledge producer) using quali and quanti approaches.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 22/04/2025

Are central banks turning into research institutes? Happy to share the publication in @finandsoc.bsky.social of an article on the scientization of the @bankofengland.bsky.social, "Not a steamroller, a 3D process", with F. Sergi, F. Claveau & @clemfon.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 25/03/2025

📣 The Political Economy group of ABSP & FNRS is hosting a workshop on "EU Political Economy in Times of Crisis" on May 23 in Brussels (details below). Feel free to apply if you're researching EU economic, geopolitical, or ecological crises, or simply stop by if you're in the area!

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 10/02/2025

How does gender affect the choice of Ph.D. topics in France in economics? tdelcey.github.io/becoming_eco... With @thomasdelcey.bsky.social we continue to explore our data on PhD in economics in France since 1900. This is another example of potential applications with these data.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 27/01/2025

What are French economics PhD dissertations talking about since 1900? We publish a first small illustrative application of our French PhD database with @thomasdelcey.bsky.social using topic modelling: tdelcey.github.io/becoming_eco... #rstats #opendata #econsky #econFR

Figure about the evolution of the topic about "économie", "développement", "évolution" and "théorie", which increases a lot in the 1970s and 1980s

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 21/01/2025

With @thomasdelcey.bsky.social we are thrilled to release the first version of the French economics PhD database 🎉 tdelcey.github.io/becoming_eco... Using Sudoc and theses.fr data, we have collected metadata on most PhD defended in France in economics since 1900! #rstats #opendata #EconSky

We are pleased to announce the release of the French PhD Thesis Database in Economics! This database offers extensive information on the majority of doctoral theses defended in France in the field of economics since 1900.

The database is available in .csv format and can be downloaded from its Zenodo Repository. Comprehensive documentation can be accessed here.

The French database is implemented as a relational database, integrating multiple interconnected data frames.

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 09/12/2024

🔎 See also a symposium (in English) on Spencer's Banzhaf last book, Pricing the Priceless, about the history of Environmental Economics

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 11/11/2024

Bergmann's approach focused on the distributional effects of policies—long before agent-based modeling was in vogue. Our paper examines how her simulations offered a fresh lens on modeling policy intervention in the 1970s, challenging both Keynesian mainstream and Lucas' new classical approach

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 11/11/2024

🚀 Our paper with @cleocz.bsky.social on Barbara Bergmann's pioneering microsimulation is accepted by EJHET! Bergmann built micro-to-macro models to capture labor market dynamics & policy impacts on inflation/unemployment in the 1970s @socarxiv.bsky.social preprint here ⏩ osf.io/preprints/so...

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 11/11/2024

Project #2: I’m working on redefining the concept of 'scientization' in central banks. Alongside Francesco Sergi, we're editing a series of papers on this, coming out in @finandsoc.bsky.social in 2025. Here’s the @socarxiv.bsky.social preprint of our conceptual intro: osf.io/preprints/so...

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 11/11/2024

With so many new followers here, let's share some updates on my current projects! I'm developing bibliometric and #network tools to trace the historical evolution of academic fields. Check out our interactive platform on macroeconomics with @alxndrtrc.bsky.social: digitalhistoryofscience.org/dhm/

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 27/02/2024

Our article "Six Decades of Economic Research at the @bankofengland.bsky.social" with @undercoverhist.bsky.social @jacosta.bsky.social, F. Claveau @clemfon.bsky.social & F. Sergi is now officially published in volume 54(1) of HOPE 🎉 You can access a free version with this link shorturl.at/lnBZ2

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Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 09/10/2023

📣 Lors du prochain congrès de l'ABSP, à Liège, le 31 janvier, 1 et 2 février, nous organisons un panel d'Economie Politique. Nous attendons vos propositions de contributions jusqu'au 31 octobre! absp.be/wp-content/u... [Propositions in English are accepted]

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