In a recent article in which they lament the timidity of modern economists, Eric Posner and Glen Weyl recently wrote:
The upshot is that economics has played virtually no role in all the major political movements of the past half-century, including civil rights, feminism, anticolonialism, the rights of sexual minorities, gun rights, antiabortion politics, and “family values” debates. It has been completely unprepared for Trumpism and other varieties of populism, having failed to predict those developments just as it failed to predict the financial crisis of 2008. And, until very recently, it has shrugged at one of the most politically charged and morally troubling issues of our time — the rise in inequality.
From Eric Posner and Glen Weyl, “How Economists Became So Timid,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 6, 2018.
While economists played little or no role in the major political movements they name above, it’s not true that economics played no role. As Gary Becker, Linda Gorman, Thomas Hazlett, and others have pointed out, free markets dramatically undercut racial discrimination.
In context, though, it seems clear that they mean economists have played no role, not that economics has played no role.
But there have been two major liberation movements in the last half century in which economists have played a huge role.
1. One took place from the late 1960s to the early 1970s and economists were incredibly effective.
2. The other is taking place now and, admittedly, economists have not yet had a huge effect.
Question for readers: What are these two?
Hint on 1. Posner, age 52, and Weyl, age 33, owe their own freedom to this movement.
Hint on 2. Two bloggers on EconLog, Bryan Caplan and I, but especially Bryan, have written a lot on this one.
READER COMMENTS
Daniel
May 8 2018 at 11:03am
I strongly suspect you have in mind the end of the draft–in which you’ve written about Milton Friedman’s role–for 1.
Andrew Clough
May 8 2018 at 11:04am
Ending the draft and opening up immigration, I would guess.
Economic can also probably get some credit for seeking to end slavery. And I’m not entirely sure about economics having no role in anti-colonialism. Surely mercantilism was a force supporting colonialism, and one undermined by economics?
David R Henderson
May 8 2018 at 11:22am
@Daniel and Andrew Clough,
Bingo.
Economic can also probably get some credit for seeking to end slavery. And I’m not entirely sure about economics having no role in anti-colonialism. Surely mercantilism was a force supporting colonialism, and one undermined by economics?
True. I was responding to Posner and Weyl, though. They granted much of what you say about the 19th century. Their claim was about the last half century, although they stretched half to about 60 years.
John Goodman
May 8 2018 at 11:41am
Those are all cultural issues, for which minds might not be changed regardless of what economics has to say.
On the core issues of health, education and welfare, economics has had a huge role. And on taxes, regulation and trade policy the views of economist have been determinative.
Remember, the health exchanges proposed by Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama were based on the economic model of managed competition.
Education vouchers are Milton Friedman’s idea, as is the EITC which is a negative income tax. Even Democrats support cost-benefit analysis for regulation and most of the time they have supported free trade.
The Flat Tax and the movement in that direction is also a Friedman idea.
MikeP
May 8 2018 at 1:01pm
The hard part is that economists have to convince the media that they have rational input in the marketplace of ideas. That is a daunting task, as the message of economists — put as many decisions in the hands that gain or lose from those decisions as possible — runs directly counter to the ethos of the media — find a problem and find someone to fix it.
Every day my San Jose newspaper regales us with stories on punitive tariffs and rent control, set as this interest versus that interest stories. The stories almost never carry any context that well over 90% of economists have strong confidence that there is a right answer to these questions.
There was a story today in which three economists and finance professors were cited, with all of them saying that stock buybacks are not a sign of anything untoward. The last quoted said, “…the money doesn’t evaporate because it leaves Apple… Investors are going to put that somewhere.”
But what did the story finish with? Some Wisconsin senator’s bill that would prohibit stock buybacks on the open market. Because inequality.
How do economists fight that?
MikeP
May 8 2018 at 1:53pm
By the way, the example “two major liberation movements in the last half century in which economists have played a huge role” both take the liberal side of the left-right divide.
It is no surprise that those two have gained traction in the media and public sphere.
Let me lay out a hypothesis: If you go back a couple decades, to when labor unions were strongly anti-immigration, you will find much less support in the media and public sphere for either the pro-immigration movement or economists’ opinions on immigration.
Also, the pro-immigration position that is all the rage in the media today is pro-immigration only with respect to illegal immigrants and refugees. The economists’ position of greatly liberalized economic migration is a complete nonstarter. The fact that economists have something positive to say about the immigration that the media and the left currently supports does not imply that the media and the left have something positive to say about the immigration economists support.
Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa Pérez
May 8 2018 at 2:15pm
So what? I prefer timidity if it is the result of objectivity — of rigor and empiricism.
Besides, Posner and Weyl forget Development Economics, an entire subfield dedicated to wrecking former colonial territories.
Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa Pérez
May 8 2018 at 2:15pm
So what? I prefer timidity if it is the result of objectivity — of rigor and empiricism.
Besides, Posner and Weyl forget Development Economics, an entire subfield dedicated to wrecking former colonial territories.
Mark Z
May 8 2018 at 3:15pm
I find their criticism of economics very much lacking in merit, to put it mildly. Chemistry, physics, and biomedical science also failed to play a big role in many important *cultural* issues – because that’s beyond the scope of their disciplines.
Posner and Weyl seem upset that economists have not followed other social scientists and vigorously weaponized their discipline to be used as a cudgel to further their particular political agenda. But a discipline that does so cannot purport to be science. We should be asking the exact opposite question of the other social sciences: why have they, in large part, abandoned dispassionate scholarship (and much of their credibility) in favor of base political advocacy? And blaming economics (which apparently is a a monolithic entity) for failing to predict the financial crisis is nonsensical. Virologists failed to effectively predict the dominant strains of the flu this year, and we ended up with a fairly ineffective vaccine; shall we toss out medical science as useless as well? Experts are not omniscient, would you believe it?
And the comment about (presumably wealth and income) inequality: that’s the kind of comment someone makes who is almost completely ignorant of the economic discussion on the topic. I suspect they dismiss a priori the position that changes in the Gini coefficient are not, eo ipsi, “morally troubling.”
Even as a non-economist, and I find their almost willfully economically ignorant criticism of economics distressing.
(Oh, also overlooked was the key role William H. Hutt played in rousing academic opposition to apartheid in the West)
Kurt Schuler
May 8 2018 at 6:44pm
Posner and Weyl write, “economics has played virtually no role in all the major political movements of the past half-century, including civil rights, feminism, anticolonialism, the rights of sexual minorities, gun rights, antiabortion politics, and “family values” debates.”
Well, there was that collapse of communism thing, but all it did was to free nearly a third of the world’s people from the threat of mass starvation; from having to work where the government told you instead of where you wanted; and from isolation from the rest of the world. And it brought higher (though not always full) political liberty with it to boot. I suppose that is small potatoes compared to the epic struggle to allow a few men to use the women’s bathroom, though.
David R Henderson
May 8 2018 at 10:29pm
@John Goodman,
Good points.
@MikeP,
By the way, the example “two major liberation movements in the last half century in which economists have played a huge role” both take the liberal side of the left-right divide.
Not clearly true. Immigration, maybe. The draft, no way. One of the strongest defenders of the draft before it was ended was Ted Kennedy. Conservative Republicans such as Tom Curtis of Missouri and Donald Rumsfeld of Illinois were important opponents of the draft.
Weir
May 9 2018 at 7:20am
A bill to bring back the draft was introduced by Fritz Hollings in the Senate, and another by Charlie Rangel in the House. Both Democrats.
Anyway. “How Economists Became So Timid.” Ideally it ought to have something to do with the first half of the twentieth century, shouldn’t it?
Racist economists a hundred years ago were anything but timid. The results ought to have been chastening. Timidity was an appropriate response.
But there’s no mention in the article of Irving Fisher or Richard Ely or Edward Ross or of what Ross called race suicide.
There’s no reference to eugenics or the American Economics Association or the Progressive economists who campaigned against blacks being allowed to vote and in support of a minimum wage to stop blacks from being allowed to work. There’s no reference to the Progressive economists who campaigned in support of immigration laws and against famine relief.
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