What are academics good for? asks Simon Wren-Lewis. I'm tempted to reply along the lines of Edwin Starr - absolutely nothing, as least for British academia.

Simon is right to say that the academics are correct to take a dim view of austerity. However, many of the same textbooks that tell us that austerity doesn't work also perpetuate guff about the money multiplier and central banks creating money. Here's Simon:

The textbooks are out of date. The core of what is taught to undergraduates has not changed in fifty years, whereas macroeconomic thinking has changed substantially. However we are not using fifty year old textbooks. You will actually find a great deal of the more modern stuff in the textbooks, but essentially in the form of add-ons. So first students are taught that central banks fix the money supply, and then they learn about Taylor rules.

The non-economist can surely be forgiven for not giving sufficient credence to the anti-austerian view, when the same sources are plain wrong on another matter*.

In this sense, academics are failing us. The other day, I wanted to know: what is the present state of research on the link between education and economic growth? Where would I go to answer this, or questions like it? Yes, there's the great Journal of Economic Perspectives and the partially paywalled Journal of Economic Surveys. But these are international ventures. Where are the British academics who are content to do similar services?

I have two other gripes.

First, many academics are idiots, in the ancient Greek sense of the word: they don't participate in public life. It's still the case that only a minority blog, for example. Yes, the few that do are great - but we're talking quality not quantity here.

Secondly, the quantity of research is actually rather low. I'm in the unusual position of being a consumer of academic work. A large chunk of my day job (and blogwork) consists of scouring Repec, SSRN, IZA and CEPR for new research. Remarkably little of what I find comes from British academics. (Some still persist in keeping their work behind paywalls, which I regard as pure criminality.) Granted, I might have a biased perspective here; my interests are in finance, labour, macro and behavioural economics and perhaps UK academia is strong elsehwere. But I'm not sure this fully exculpates them.

Now, I'll concede immediately that these flaws - if such they be - aren't wholly imdividual failures. It's likely that, just as the financial system can cause rational individuals to produce institutionalized stupidity, so the academic system - with the twin pressures of the REF and teaching burdens - cause academics to become institutionalized idiots.

But is this the whole story? Might it also be that academic culture militates against academics contributing more to public understanding? A culture of pedantry, maximally ungenerous reading (and fear thereof) and obsession with methodology aren't conducive to an outward-looking contribution to open public life.

I say all this in a mood of sorrow and relief. Sorrow, because a potentially great resource is being wasted. Relief, because I might well have become an academic if there had been jobs available in the 1980s. Very often, I say a little prayer of gratitude to Lady Thatcher for saving me from that fate.