The anatomy of anti-economics

I recently had occasion to re-read Paul Krugman's "Pop Internationalism", and this passage from 'The illusion of conflict in international trade' jumped out at me. His point of reference is international economics, but in my experience it also applies to other fields as well:

As far as I can tell, the attitude of policy-minded intellectuals to economics is pretty much unique. Many people have opinions about legal matters or about defense policy; but they generally accept that a fair amount of specialized knowledge is necessary to discuss these matters intelligently. Thus a law degree is expected of a commentator on legal affairs, a professional military career or a record of study of military matters is expected of a commentator on defense, and so on.

When it comes to economics, however, and especially international trade, it seems to be generally accepted that there is no specialized knowledge to master. Lawyers, political scientists, historians cheerfully offer their views on the subject, and often seem quite sure that whatever it is that professors have to say – something they are fairly blurry about – is naïve and wrong…

[T]he attitude … that international economics requires no special knowledge, and that the theories of the academics, whatever they are, are obviously silly … is extremely common…

[W]hy is this attitude so prevalent? At this point, I am in the awkward position of having to defend economic professionalism by playing amateur sociologist, but let me offer the following five-part hypothesis.

First, economics is a subject that touches so many real-world concerns that there is a great incentive to claim expertise. This is especially true of international economics, in which the romance and allure of anything to which to word “global” is attached adds to the attraction of the enterprise. As a result, a large number of people inevitably propound views about international economics without much background in the subject.

Second, ignorance finds strength in numbers. Since so many lawyers, political experts, etc. feel free to opine on economics, others considering such a role do not hesitate over their lack of formal qualifications or knowledge of the field.

Third, economics written by non-economists often sounds more persuasive than the real thing. This is not just a matter of jargon: no matter how well explained, serious economic analysis is often intrinsically difficult…

Fourth, there is a lot of bad-mouthing of economists. This is understandable. After all, suppose you are, say, a military expert who has decided that he is an economic expert too. You write an article or even a book on the subject; then an academic economist tells you that all of your ingenious arguments are familiar fallacies covered in an undergraduate textbook, and that your basic thesis involves a contradiction because you do not understand national accounts. You might decide that you really should go back and read a basic textbook; more likely, you begin denigrating economists as pompous types who actually don’t know anything.

And finally, the bad-mouthing of economists, by people who typically have rapport with their audience because they share that audience’s misconceptions, reinforces the perception that economists have nothing to offer – which encourages more non-economists to declare themselves experts, enter the fray, and reinforces the cycle.

In short, there is a circular process by which bad ideas drive out good. As far as the public discourse on international trade is concerned, this process is essentially complete: not only sophisticated theories, but comparative advantage and even S – I = X – M have been driven out of the discussion.

Comments

[Adam]

This is definitely most true of economics - everyone's an expert and the academics are ivory tower eggheads who don't understand the real world. But it's also true, to an extent, of law, politics, and other such fields. It's really only when you get into the hard sciences that people are genuinely willing to defer to expertise, and then to such a high degree that they basically delegate all responsibility for critical thought to the specialists. Just look at the public attitude towards global warming and other scares fed by science; the people behind them are gods, incapable of being incorrect or biased.

- Adam

P.S. Every time I read something intelligent Krugman once wrote I shake my head and wonder what the hell happened.

[Mandos]

There's a hypothesis that's a lot less flattering to economics. I mean, it could in fact be that the emperor isn't as well-dressed as you think he is. The main antagonism towards "mainstream economics" has come from the left, largely, but economists seem particularly oblivious to the critiques.

I dispute the fact that other sciences are "immune" to these forms of criticism. It's a give-and-take between, say, economists and oil engineers/geologists over peak oil. As someone who, um, dabbles in theoretical linguistics, well, theoretical linguists have no trouble criticizing basic concepts from, say, behavioural psychology. For instance, Chomsky regularly dumps on economics AND behavioural psych...

[Northern Observer]

What happened to Krugman was that in 2000 he realised that no one in the American political establishment, including leading academics, was willing to call the Bush 43 out on its policy lies. What is so interesting about Krugman is that his opposition to the administration and the current Republican Party comes naturally from his expertise. It started when he called BS on the GOP tax cut claims during the 200o Prez campaign. It grew when he called BS on the Social Security GOP bamboozle. And it morphed over to Iraq when Krugman realised, the first serious pundit to realise BTW, the the Bush GOP used lying as a basic operating method.

But originally it all comes from his research. He saw an uncontested untruth and stepped up to refute it and the rest is history.

[kharris]

Before we get carried away in our sympathy for economists, let us not forget that evolutionary biologists have faced their own trouble with lay critics. During the present Bush administration (pardon the detour south), the habit has been to trot out non-experts to counter inconvenient facts in every field of enquiry.

There is also a tendency, at banks anyhow, to treat the economist as an expert on politics and foreign policy.

I don't mean to object to the observations made here, but to broaden them a bit. I suspect willingness to claim expertise in any given area is directly proportional to the payoff from having the answer go one's own way. Economics is big on payoffs, so everybody wants to claim expertise.