The impact of bad writing in economics

We find significant style differences between articles written by economists for their professional journals and articles by the same economists in the Wall Street Journal. We find no evidence that style influences the professional success of economists, which suggests that the private rewards to improving the quality of writing are low. Indeed, each community of scholars has probably adopted a "professionally correct" writing style, from which its members diverge little. However, scholars do alter their rhetorical style to communicate effectively with audiences other than the professional community. This suggests that intraand inter-group (written) communication by economists is efficient.