Do you have some specific examples of this phenomenon you would be willing to share? You seem to feel that academics have a lot of influence in the world, but I am extremely skeptical of this hypothesis. IME academics are generally ignored except when they are saying something we like. Or the corollary: we go find the academic that is saying the thing we like and ignore all the other ones.
If we take specifically the field of economics for a moment (since I know a bit about this one), what are examples of "middle managers" sticking to the recommendations of economists?
Because it's not hard to make a list of ideas that economists generally love and pretty much everyone else hates: paying organ donors, carbon taxes, land value taxes, charging for public parking, getting rid of minimum parking requirements, allowing surge pricing of various kinds, unilateral free trade, cash transfers instead of in-kind benefits, and abolishing the mortgage interest deduction. Honorable mention to congestion pricing, which economists of course love, but is interesting because support for it actually went up in NYC after implementation; support was pretty low before implementation.
Ok sure but can you point to even one instance anywhere of the will of politicians being subverted by “middle managers” (as you say) listening to academic economists? It doesn’t happen because no one listens to academics.
I’m confronting your assertion that academics have power in our society and you haven’t put forward any arguments that they do
If we take specifically the field of economics for a moment (since I know a bit about this one), what are examples of "middle managers" sticking to the recommendations of economists?
Because it's not hard to make a list of ideas that economists generally love and pretty much everyone else hates: paying organ donors, carbon taxes, land value taxes, charging for public parking, getting rid of minimum parking requirements, allowing surge pricing of various kinds, unilateral free trade, cash transfers instead of in-kind benefits, and abolishing the mortgage interest deduction. Honorable mention to congestion pricing, which economists of course love, but is interesting because support for it actually went up in NYC after implementation; support was pretty low before implementation.