The movie Inside Job is unkind to supposedly neutral economists who take frequently large and frequently undisclosed sums of money from moneyed interests favored by their writings and utterances. Edward Fullbrook put up some juicy quotes from reviewers here, for example this one from Sean O'Grady in The Sunday Independent:
Yet the most pathetic and fascinating individuals in this film are the economists, whose uncomfortable links with private enterprise and the banks are excruciatingly dragged out of them. Fingering them is a novelty, and they come off badly. Especially enjoyable is a tetchy exchange with Glenn Hubbard, former economic adviser to George W Bush, and current dean of Columbia University Business School. No, he won’t tell us his outside earnings.
Equally relishable is the spectacle of Frederic Mishkin, a professor at Columbia and former member of the US Federal Reserve, looking mortified about the $124,000 he was paid by the Icelandic chamber of commerce to write a paper extolling the stability of their financial system. But best of all is John Campbell, honorary fellow of Oxford University’s Corpus Christi College and chair of the Harvard Department of Economics, who ends up more flummoxed than any mere academic has a right to be.
In comments, noted heterodox economist Paul Davidson relates this bit of personal history (I fixed a few typos):
As someone who has been arguing against them since 1960 when I published my first article in the AER; and in the 1970s when [as] a member of Brookings Economic Panel I was vociferious—and I learned that I was to be ignored.
For example, when I applied for an NSF [National Science Foundation] grant (in 1980) to do a research project on changing the international payments system. My project was rejected by all the inside NSF peers. One even wrote on his rejection report paper that “Davidson has been successful in publishing his research. But he marches to a different drummer and therefore should raise his own money and not ask for a grant from OUR MONEY” [emphasis added by Davidson]. This rejection is filed in the Duke University library archives along with my other professional correspondence, etc.–-under a Duke library project to collect the papers, correspondence, etc of many economists!!