Proof of their intellectual dishonesty is easily found. For every economist who can "prove" the effectiveness of, say, trickle down economics there is another who can demonstrate that such policies are a complete failure.
Why are differences of opinion intellectually "dishonest"?
I thought that is how intellectual inquiry works -- somebody proposes something, other people try to verify it or shoot it down, and eventually it either becomes accepted or discarded. If that is dishonest than so is the whole project of scientific and philosophical inquiry, I'd say. What's the alternative, stone tablets handed down from heaven?
Plus, doesn't the fact that there can be such differences of opinion among economists (or people that write about economics) pretty much demolish the argument that economists are just a bunch of people pushing some orthodoxy in defense of the status quo?
There is a long and distinguished history of progressive economists who dedicated their careers to improving human lives -- people like Keynes, Alvin Hansen, James Tobin, Wassily Leontief, Robert Solow, Lawrence Klein, Gunnar Myrdal, Gosta Rehn, Rudolf Meidner, James Meade, Arthur Lewis, Amartya Sen, William Vickrey, George Akerlof, Joseph Stiglitz, William Nordhaus, Paul Krugman, or David Card -- all well-respected "mainstream" economists, none of whom have followed any "party line". You might read up on what some of them said.
After all, there are those in Physics who oppose the mainstream views at any moment.
However, whilst "differences of opinion" aid intellectual inquiry, the inquiry is only productive if there is some method to resolve the differences.
Basically, economists have to stop hiding from academic reality. They are not a "young, fledgling discipline" any more.
They want to say they are "social scientists"? Then they have have academic integrity and begin to exercise it. "Too busy with research" just indicates everyone is busy building their castles in the air and no-one is putting any effort into review.
This is the basic dishonesty. Too many economists will say "economic theory says..." because for them and their "school" it does. And yet, debunking the work of other economists who teach in good schools and publish in acceptable journals is somehow beneath them...
That is not acceptable, neither in the narrow sense of academic integrity, nor in the wider sense that we rely on economics to help us maintain our societies.
I am sure had this diary framed things differently, you could come up with some examples yourself.
Of course, as Drew argues, this is as much a societal problem as anything. We persist in treating economics as basic science when it plainly is not (yet?). Likewise, too many have twisted economics to support their politics.
No human endeavour is perfect, but economists need to start accepting more responsiblity for the state of their subject. A good analogy would be Intelligent Design. The proponents of ID are engaging in all the same tricks with biology that various (left and right) politicians have done with economics. But the biologists are fighting, they are actually working on keeping "biology" a testable, evidence based endeavour. There are many good economists who do the same, but not enough, it seems to me.
I also think the idea of economics as a "value-free" science is nonsense. The roots of economics are in moral philosophy (Adam Smith was a professor of philosophy), after all.
I have no problem with the scientific method, or quanitification, or mathematics, or "rational choice" theory in economics, as long as their users understand that they are means to an end (understanding the way the world works), not the end in themselves. They are tools to be used wisely in the pursuit of knowledge, and they are not the only tools, as some "economic imperialists" fail to understand. These methods are not the only source of knowledge and wisdom.
But just because these methods are abused, or that some of their users make claims to universality that cannot be substantiated is no excuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's just as big a mistake to throw out economic theory as "useless" as it is to proclaim it as the sole path to a proper understanding of the social world.
But it seems to me, TG, that you are in a minority in the economics world. All too many economists are happy to proclaim (and indeed teach students) that they are "value-free" or "value-neutral" (and/or universal) and all too many other economists are happy to let those statements go unchallenged.
You challenge them here, and presumably in other places, but you are a rarity.
The whole externalities debate is probably the best place to understand this problem. It's true in the abstract to say that most of the theory works, it's just that too many economists don't take proper account of the externalities.
But why don't they? And how can it be fixed?
There are answers to these questions, but it seems there is very little effort in the economics establishment to even take the problem on. It is hard then not to have the suspicion that the ideology of economics is dominating and distorting the practice of the discipline.
the ideology of economics is dominating and distorting the practice of the discipline
Yes, too many economists abuse their positions by making claims (i.e. how great the "free market" always is) that are not even substantiated by the basic theory or empirical work.
But, again, there are areas of real disagreement. Many economists think that externalities and information asyummetries are exceptions, not the rule, and not because they have "sold out." Now, I don't think you can resolve this disagreement with economic theory, as rdf says, you have to look very closely at how the world works to figure it out, and maybe the problem with much of economics is that it has become too divorced from the real world, too engrossed in math and greek symbols (some term this "blackboard economics"), not so much that it has sold out.
Take "supply-side economics" - the idea that tax cuts create so much growth that they actually increase revenues. I know of no professional economist anywhere who believes that this is true. The actual "supply-side" theory was created by journalists and politicians (OK Arthur Laffer is strictly speaking a professional economist but he is a joke in the profession now and has been for years). Some economists supported the basic policy goals, but for other reasons -- some think that reducing taxes on capital creates more growth, others are ideological conservatives or libertarians who want to shrink government -- but nobody in the profession believes the essential "supply-side" story, and yet it is still the basis for right-wing fiscal policy in this country.
Is this the fault of the economics profession? Dumb journalists? Opportunistic politicans? A gullible public that wants its tax cuts and social programs too?
And what exactly are economists supposed to do about all this?
Yes, lots of other people are responsible in this mess.
But economists have a responsibility, just as scientists do, not just to do research, but to communicate the results.
My view is that "good economists" have entered a comfortable zone where they say stuff like "Laffer is a joke, no-one believes that stuff any more" whilst ignoring all the professionals who are still spouting (and worse, teaching) it.
Those professionals may too be a joke, but the joke is on the rest of us as the "good economists" have not worked out a useful way to begin tagging the "jokes" for the rest of us.
I realise I place a heavy burden on economists to try and save a gullible public from itself, but that's what happens when you are the expert. An expert has the responsibility to do what they can to help the non-experts out.
If your point is really true - and I'm not completely convinced - then the ethical thing to do would be to make a public stand.
Richard Dawkins and others seem happy to launch crusades against religion, ID and parapsychology. And there's a small but significant trend in science to popularise abstruse subjects like string theory and cosmology. So public campaigning in science isn't alien to the mainstream.
Is it too much to ask that economists speak up and say 'No, this is wrong' when the ideas are misused in the media?
Otherwise, how can you explain why the Economist, the WSJ, FT and the Fed all seem to have a strong ideological unanimity? If there's a groundswell of dissent among mainstream academic economists, shouldn't we be hearing more about it?
As for business-friendly monetary policy, all I can say is that one of the principals of this very blog thinks Paul Volcker is a genius, so maybe you ought to start there.
Sure, modern economics is dominated by people who believe in inflation targets and think that 6% unemployment is "full employment." And those who disagree do speak out, although its' mighty difficult for those views to get an airing from the likes of the FT or the Economist.
If a hundred academic economists got together and put out a press release saying that current thinking is wrong, wouldn't that be covered as news, and wouldn't it start a public debate?
It's paradoxical to suggest that they don't seem to mind what's published in the media, because it suggests they place a very low value on their own expertise. You'd think they'd at least make an effort to get some books published and put some time into promoting them.
It's either that, or they don't see much wrong with what's being said on their behalf, and the mainstream really doesn't disagree much at all.
I mean, most people in the U.S., anyway, think that government can't do a damn thing right, a view which is often reflected in the media. Yet I don't hear all the economist-bashers here berating the political science profession for not getting out there and correcting the impression.
Look, econ is no better or no worse than any other intellectual discipline. It just gets more heat because there are more of them in policy-making positions.
If you don't like what you see in FT or the Economist, start writing letters to the editor demanding a wider range of views. Bone up on which economists and publications are offering progressive-friendly views on economics.
Want a start:
I'm not sure how this is relevant. This isn't about public status, it's about public policy.
Econ is much worse than any other discipline because its apparent inability to promote any point of view other than neo-liberal orthodoxy is the single biggest threat to peaceful existence on this planet. In the West, no other discipline has as much influence on national and corporate policy.
If the party line isn't changed, a lot of people are going to die. Not a few are dying already, and for the rest of us the effects are going to start being felt 5-10 years from now, and from there - barring divine intervention or some kind of technological deus ex machina - the outlook gets less and less optimistic.
So while I agree that we can all do something as outsiders, is it asking too much of progressive economists that they try harder to raise their own public profile?
It's good to have a useful list like the one you've posted, but I think for most people this information is so far out of the mainstream of debate that it's almost invisible. As an outsider, how can promote something you've never heard of?
The right-wing started from ideology and made a conscious push to popularise it by capitalising deliberately on those who felt marginalised and discontented. What it didn't do was produce useful ideas and wait for the discontented to find out about them.
You have government-run worker programs, for example, as an accepted means to fight recession because of liberal economists. One of the most famous economists -- maybe the most famous -- in America is a liberal economist: Paul Krugman. Most Nobel Laureates endorsed John Kerry.
It's all well and good to bash the entire field, but you're falling into the same trap that DeAnander fell into with Steve Keen's Debunking Economics -- taking the neoliberal economists and propping them up as being somehow the "true" economists, when, in fact, they make up a fairly small minority in macroeconomics. Even Ed Prescott, who won the Nobel in (I think) 2004 and is one of the kings of Neoclassicalist economics, had to admit that the liberal Keynesian order had not been overthrown.
I think you're writing the conclusion before the thesis. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
While the number wasn't one hundred, they have done this, and it was covered, albeit very briefly. Kerry had the endorsement of something along the lines of twenty-five Nobel Laureates, who all signed a letter claiming that Bush's economic policies were endangering the country's future. The story made it all the way to the nightly news.
It's paradoxical to suggest that they don't seem to mind what's published in the media, because it suggests they place a very low value on their own expertise. You'd think they'd at least make an effort to get some books published and put some time into promoting them. It's either that, or they don't see much wrong with what's being said on their behalf, and the mainstream really doesn't disagree much at all.
As I said above, the best economists, with the exception of Krugman, are off doing research and aren't going to waste time with a bunch of media appearances. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
As I said above, the best economists, with the exception of Krugman, are off doing research and aren't going to waste time with a bunch of media appearances.
I wouldn't call Volcker a genius, but I would call him one of the better Fed chairman we've had. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
I doubt anyone at the Fed gives a shit about the EU, outside of perhaps ECB policy.
This is unanimity? I don't think so. It's fairly easy to separate the crank-theory peddlers among these four. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Absolutely.
The overwhelming majority of great economists are, or were, progressives. Two exceptions are Milton Friedman and Friedrich A. Hayek, but even these two held some progressive views in their political philosophy. (Maybe Alfred Marshall, too.) Add those three, along with Paul Samuelson, and you've pretty much named the great economists of the last century or so. (Marshall's book was written in 1890, but he's basically considered the beginning of 20th-Century economics, and it's hard to leave Keynes's professor out.) Don't forget recent names like Brad DeLong and David Romer. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
