Econ Journal Watch and Dan Klein

You've got to like an academic publication which not only runs a regular feature called "Intellectual Tyranny of the Status Quo" but also links to this blog. (Check out the note on the bottom of page 25 of this article in the current issue.)

The journal is entitled Econ Journal Watch, and the entire current issue is available online here.

The editor is Dan Klein of Santa Clara University. Here are three reasons I am predisposed to like Klein:

• Klein is the author of a recent paper documenting the leftward tilt of the faculties at Stanford and Berkeley. From the abstract:

  The findings support the “one-party campus” conjecture. For UC-Berkeley, we found an overall Democrat:Republican ratio of 9.9:1. For Stanford, we found an overall D:R ratio of 7.6:1. Moreover, the breakdown by faculty rank shows that Republicans are an “endangered species” on the two campuses.

• Klein has exposed bias in the Social Science Citation Index® (SSCI), a database of scholarly literature used by social scientists. Thompson ISI, which maintains the index, purports that the SSCI

  [a]llows researchers to conduct comprehensive searches that uncover all the relevant information they need.

  However, in 2004 paper, Klein

  present[s] a variety of evidence of bias [in ths SSCI] in favor of journals of a social democratic orientation and against journals of a classical liberal orientation.

  In other words, the "comprehensive" database of scholarly literature may be biased to the left. And I suspect most of its users are oblivious.
  
  
• A list of Klein's writings contains a section entitled "Papers with a decidedly libertarian voice."

'Nough said.