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That's really interesting, thanks. How would you describe the agenda / bias of the Mercatus centre? I've developed a pretty positive view of them based on what

That's really interesting, thanks. How would you describe the agenda / bias of the Mercatus centre? I've developed a pretty positive view of them based on what I've seen of Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok and Robin Hanson.

wahern 8y ago
As an alumnus of GMU Law School where the Mercatus Center was once located (maybe still?), I'm hesitant to disparage them. Without a doubt they have very intelligent researchers and students. But the pressure to publish--by both the school and the center's benefactors--is tremendous and, frankly, the research output I saw as a student (often pasted on the walls) never seemed to remotely justify the conclusions. I vividly remember one poster describing MRI scans (with a ridiculously small sample size, not that a large sample would have mattered) used to justify some sketchy hypothesis premised on some neurological/behavioral science that I'm pretty sure has since been debunked. Most of the research I encountered seemed of similar quality. I'm not a professional economist, but my undergraduate (International Politics) and graduate school (Law) programs heavily emphasized economics. The thing about economics, such as with the Principle of Comparative Advantage, is you can often draw whatever conclusions you'd prefer if you don't rigorously examine, empirically, the actual state of affairs. The parameters matter, and there are alot of them to pin down. That kind of rigorous examination is extremely difficult and expensive, and even huge, well-funded, well-staffed organizations like the World Bank and IMF have historically sucked at performing all but the simplest empirical studies to justify their policy arguments. It's a good bet that most institutions, such as the Mercatus Center, simply lack the resources to do the kind of empirical research necessary to justify their conclusions. So when I see these centers make concrete policy statements or recommendations, I'm always very skeptical. I used to work at a national security think tank on K Street. I see the Mercatus Center on the same continuum as K Street think tanks; perhaps more academically focused given where its based, but ultimately its work is both fundamentally limited by the inherent complexity of the research area, comparatively meager resources, and strongly tainted by its institutional biases. Importantly, neither the organization nor its researchers acquire funding or prestige by admitting as much; they get funding and prestige by publishing strong, sometimes radical claims based on methodological approaches preordained to provide the answers they sought. The value of something like the Mercatus Center is in how it chooses to apply basic economic principles. The arguments they make are often theoretically interesting. But, again, the dominate factors in reality are invariably empirical, not theoretical. So at the very least they provide me food for thought, keep me honest, and help me form my own constructive criticisms on issues; but I heavily discount their policy conclusions, just as I do most such organizations (but especially the Mercatus Center because, frankly, they aggressively pursue funding from a very particular subset of benefactors, such as the Koch brothers, which means they're incentivized more than many other organizations to publish results that align with those benefactors' worldview, if not the immediate financial interests of those benefactors).

wahern 8y ago

As an alumnus of GMU Law School where the Mercatus Center was once located (maybe still?), I'm hesitant to disparage them. Without a doubt they have very intelligent researchers and students. But the pressure to publish--by both the school and the center's benefactors--is tremendous and, frankly, the research output I saw as a student (often pasted on the walls) never seemed to remotely justify the conclusions. I vividly remember one poster describing MRI scans (with a ridiculously small sample size, not that a large sample would have mattered) used to justify some sketchy hypothesis premised on some neurological/behavioral science that I'm pretty sure has since been debunked. Most of the research I encountered seemed of similar quality. I'm not a professional economist, but my undergraduate (International Politics) and graduate school (Law) programs heavily emphasized economics. The thing about economics, such as with the Principle of Comparative Advantage, is you can often draw whatever conclusions you'd prefer if you don't rigorously examine, empirically, the actual state of affairs. The parameters matter, and there are alot of them to pin down. That kind of rigorous examination is extremely difficult and expensive, and even huge, well-funded, well-staffed organizations like the World Bank and IMF have historically sucked at performing all but the simplest empirical studies to justify their policy arguments. It's a good bet that most institutions, such as the Mercatus Center, simply lack the resources to do the kind of empirical research necessary to justify their conclusions. So when I see these centers make concrete policy statements or recommendations, I'm always very skeptical. I used to work at a national security think tank on K Street. I see the Mercatus Center on the same continuum as K Street think tanks; perhaps more academically focused given where its based, but ultimately its work is both fundamentally limited by the inherent complexity of the research area, comparatively meager resources, and strongly tainted by its institutional biases. Importantly, neither the organization nor its researchers acquire funding or prestige by admitting as much; they get funding and prestige by publishing strong, sometimes radical claims based on methodological approaches preordained to provide the answers they sought. The value of something like the Mercatus Center is in how it chooses to apply basic economic principles. The arguments they make are often theoretically interesting. But, again, the dominate factors in reality are invariably empirical, not theoretical. So at the very least they provide me food for thought, keep me honest, and help me form my own constructive criticisms on issues; but I heavily discount their policy conclusions, just as I do most such organizations (but especially the Mercatus Center because, frankly, they aggressively pursue funding from a very particular subset of benefactors, such as the Koch brothers, which means they're incentivized more than many other organizations to publish results that align with those benefactors' worldview, if not the immediate financial interests of those benefactors).