writing style - How to decide whether I should use “we” in an essay?

The answers to this question promote a view that the personal pronoun we is acceptable in an academic paper. But I did not see an answer there, or more generally on this site, that discourages the use of we. This question is different to the one mentioned above because it queries whether the word we should be used at all, not just to ask whether I or we is more appropriate.

The economics department at my university (UCT) discourages the use of personal pronouns in an essay – I was marked down in my essay for my use of the word we. At the end of my essay, I wrote

In conclusion, we note that the European sovereign debt crisis created uncertainty in the global financial market, and South Africa was one of many countries that dealt with this.

I decided to use we in my essay because I had grown accustomed to seeing it in mathematics textbooks, so I assumed that it was formal enough. But the economics department says that it is not formal enough.

Even though it seems acceptable to use we in some circles, it seems that it is a point of debate. What guidelines should I be using in order to make my decision about whether to use we or not?* Should I continue to use we as I see fit, except for economics essays? Or, should I apply this rule to all my academic essays (I also study public policy & administration)?

It would ostensibly be silly to have different writing styles emanating from the same person. The problem has not been brought up before, and I have used the word in a number of sociology essays in first year, and one public policy & administration essay in second year. In those essays, I used the word in the following ways.

In this section, we discuss motivations for why provincial government should be restructured.

and

Applying this model to provincial government, we can graph a U-shaped function of long-run average cost.

and

Approaching the question from the side of the teacher, we find that inequality can be caused via culturally insensitive teaching methods.

As a final clarification, I do prefer to use the word.

* Edit: Although it was not initially made clear, I have not been provided with style guides. However, I doubt that I would ask this question if I were provided with style guides. Saying that I should "follow the style guide" makes perfect sense, but doesn't really help me in my situation. I asked this question on academia.SE so that I could ask others to brainstorm ideas about how I could make the decision without a style guide (e.g. how were those rules formed in the first place?).

Answer

As already noted, there is usually little you can do against a styleguide, unless it’s blantantly against every convention. Be prepared to encounter styleguides with much weirder rules, in which, e.g., the punctuation at the end of this sentence is “correct.”

That being said, you can impose some guidelines. I am aware of the following occasions on which we (or I) can be used in an academic paper:

1. 
   

   To describe experiments or simulations you performed, e.g.:

   
   

   
   

   We transmogrified 500 apples and determined their contrafibularity.

   
   

   
   



2. 
   

   To refer to the results and other work from the same paper:

   
   

   
   

   In comparison to Smith’s transmogrificator, our method has the advantage that […]

   
   

   
   


3. 
   

   In derivations (most common in mathematics):

   
   

   
   

   Combining equations 23 and 42, we obtain: […]

   
   
   

   
   


4. 
   

   To summarize the paper in an abstract or introduction:

   
   

   
   

   We here present a new method to transmogrify bananas.

   
   

   
   

   or

   
   

   
   

   In this review, we summarise recent advances in the transmogrification of fruit.

   
   
   

   
   


5. 
   

   In phrases such as:

   
   

   
   

   We note that […]

   
   

   
   


6. 
   

   In the acknowledgements:

   
   
   

   
   

   We thank Jane Doe for constructive comments.

   
   

   
   

Now, if you are writing an economics essay, you are probably not performing experiments or deriving new theories, which excludes reasons 1–3. In fact, most review papers use we only for reasons 4–6. Moreover, you likely do not have a summary in the style needed for reason 4. Using we only due to reason 5 would be so rare that it can be considered inconsistent style, in particular since it can usually be avoided easily.

Thus, I expect that the reason for which you were marked down was that you used we in a way that is not considered appropriate in academic writing at all, or because you used it only due to reason 5 only.

If you want a general guideline (if none is obviously imposed): If you describe experiments, derivations and similar of your own, use we. In the abstract or introduction of a review paper or something similar, you can use we. If you are doing neither, avoid using we except in the acknowledgements.