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> Economists are in broad agreement because they're paid to be. This is well-documented historically. This is complete nonsense. No one pays me to think or

> Economists are in broad agreement because they're paid to be. This is well-documented historically. This is *complete* nonsense. No one pays me to think or say anything. No one pays anyone in my department anything to take a particular position. For a simple example of what nonsense your claim is: the economist’s definition of rationality is that preferences are (1.) complete and (2.) transitive. That’s it. (See any microeconomics textbook for proof. Sometimes (3.) reflexivity is included, sometimes smaller sets of axioms which imply the others are used instead.) How “political” is that definition?? Did someone rich guy pay Paul Samuelson or Gerard Debreu or Kenneth Arrow to use that definition 80 years ago? Obviously not - moreover Arrow and Samuelson at least were on the political left! (And I simply don’t know Debreu’s politics. He could have been on the left too.) Your comment is *entirely uninformed* and *totally unfair* to an entire profession.

bingbong70 6y ago
Paul Krugman, I believe, talked about the risk of being blacklisted if one attacks the US monetary system and central bank. I expect there is some truth to his observations about pissing off the money printers.
gmtx725 6y ago
It's not that simplistic, it's not a conspiracy it's a self-selecting self-replicating system. How do economics professors get hired? By impressing other economics professors. And by having the power to win funding for the department. Who are the people that tend to fit those criteria? Mostly, those who already agree with the existing establishment, and those who already have views amenable to the well-resourced bodies that distribute funding.
- huitzitziltzin 6y ago
  > How do economics professors get hired? By impressing other economics professors. This claim is true. > Who are the people that tend to fit those criteria? Mostly, those who already agree with the existing establishment This claim is false. If you can empirically support a result which shows that something most other economists believe is likely false and can do so convincingly, you can write your ticket to any department in the country. Some of the most successful graduate students every year do things like this (not all, because it's very hard to do). But the profession is 100% open to this kind of work. > And by having the power to win funding for the department. This demonstrates a misunderstanding of how economics departments are funded. Grant funding is a very small part of the departmental budget everywhere. We are not (to take an example where department funding does depend on grants) health policy departments.
  - gmtx725 6y ago
    > This claim is false. If you can empirically support a result which shows that something most other economists believe is likely false and can do so convincingly It's almost impossible to do that though isn't it? Economics isn't a hard science, it's not like you can run RCTs or experiments. And all actually-existing economic systems are situated within an actually-existing political, social and historical context, meaning we only ever observe a tiny fraction of the possible universe of economic systems. There is no possibility to explore counterfactuals. > This demonstrates a misunderstanding of how economics departments are funded. Grant funding is a very small part of the departmental budget everywhere I never mentioned grants, departments still have to be funded somehow, whatever that process is, it will introduce selection biases.
    - huitzitziltzin 6y ago
      > It's almost impossible to do that though isn't it? Not at all. It IS hard, but that's because research is hard. If it were possible to easily show widely-held beliefs to be wrong, someone would have done it already. (No different from any other scientific field!) But it does happen. >Economics isn't a hard science, it's not like you can run RCTs or experiments. Also wrong. You can in many areas. Indeed, there is a gigantic literature on field experiments, and the whole field of development economics runs on RCTs. In macro it is difficult, because no one is going to give you a whole economy to play with, but lab experiments in macro exist. Most empirical work in macro is not based on experiments. But that does not make it impossible to learn anything, it just makes it hard. Indeed, that is why we have spent years developing methods to solve this problem, then more years criticizing and refining our own methods. That process will never end. > And all actually-existing economic systems are situated within an actually-existing political, social and historical context, meaning we only ever observe a tiny fraction of the possible universe of economic systems. There is no possibility to explore counterfactuals. Again, this is what makes it hard. It is not impossible. To answer certain questions for certain models may be impossible b/c there is no way to identify the parameters in question empirically. You make these claims like it makes our whole enterprise worthless or impossible. We have taken it as a challenge to attempt to develop interesting methods to answer hard questions. Exploring unseen counterfactuals on the basis of parameters estimated from models given existing data is literally my bread and butter EVERY day (I am not a macroeconomist, but I am an economist). And it is the bread and butter of many of us. Give us some credit, an overwhelming majority of us are not conservative ideologues. And if you really want to know how it works, HOW we learn things from data (in macro and elsewhere) I can provide references.
viburnum 6y ago
You may believe what you do sincerely but if you believed otherwise then someone else would have had your job.
viburnum 6y ago
Samuelson literally self-censored his textbook in the wake of the Mccarthyite campaign against Lorie Tarshis. A similar campaigned blocked Galbraith from chairing the department at the University of Illinois. One thing Cowen has in common with Hayek and Mises is his university salary is supplied by the inherited wealth of conservative activists.

> Economists are in broad agreement because they're paid to be. This is well-documented historically. This is *complete* nonsense. No one pays me to think or

bingbong70 6y ago

Paul Krugman, I believe, talked about the risk of being blacklisted if one attacks the US monetary system and central bank. I expect there is some truth to his observations about pissing off the money printers.

gmtx725 6y ago

It's not that simplistic, it's not a conspiracy it's a self-selecting self-replicating system. How do economics professors get hired? By impressing other economics professors. And by having the power to win funding for the department. Who are the people that tend to fit those criteria? Mostly, those who already agree with the existing establishment, and those who already have views amenable to the well-resourced bodies that distribute funding.

huitzitziltzin 6y ago
> How do economics professors get hired? By impressing other economics professors. This claim is true. > Who are the people that tend to fit those criteria? Mostly, those who already agree with the existing establishment This claim is false. If you can empirically support a result which shows that something most other economists believe is likely false and can do so convincingly, you can write your ticket to any department in the country. Some of the most successful graduate students every year do things like this (not all, because it's very hard to do). But the profession is 100% open to this kind of work. > And by having the power to win funding for the department. This demonstrates a misunderstanding of how economics departments are funded. Grant funding is a very small part of the departmental budget everywhere. We are not (to take an example where department funding does depend on grants) health policy departments.
- gmtx725 6y ago
  > This claim is false. If you can empirically support a result which shows that something most other economists believe is likely false and can do so convincingly It's almost impossible to do that though isn't it? Economics isn't a hard science, it's not like you can run RCTs or experiments. And all actually-existing economic systems are situated within an actually-existing political, social and historical context, meaning we only ever observe a tiny fraction of the possible universe of economic systems. There is no possibility to explore counterfactuals. > This demonstrates a misunderstanding of how economics departments are funded. Grant funding is a very small part of the departmental budget everywhere I never mentioned grants, departments still have to be funded somehow, whatever that process is, it will introduce selection biases.
  - huitzitziltzin 6y ago
    > It's almost impossible to do that though isn't it? Not at all. It IS hard, but that's because research is hard. If it were possible to easily show widely-held beliefs to be wrong, someone would have done it already. (No different from any other scientific field!) But it does happen. >Economics isn't a hard science, it's not like you can run RCTs or experiments. Also wrong. You can in many areas. Indeed, there is a gigantic literature on field experiments, and the whole field of development economics runs on RCTs. In macro it is difficult, because no one is going to give you a whole economy to play with, but lab experiments in macro exist. Most empirical work in macro is not based on experiments. But that does not make it impossible to learn anything, it just makes it hard. Indeed, that is why we have spent years developing methods to solve this problem, then more years criticizing and refining our own methods. That process will never end. > And all actually-existing economic systems are situated within an actually-existing political, social and historical context, meaning we only ever observe a tiny fraction of the possible universe of economic systems. There is no possibility to explore counterfactuals. Again, this is what makes it hard. It is not impossible. To answer certain questions for certain models may be impossible b/c there is no way to identify the parameters in question empirically. You make these claims like it makes our whole enterprise worthless or impossible. We have taken it as a challenge to attempt to develop interesting methods to answer hard questions. Exploring unseen counterfactuals on the basis of parameters estimated from models given existing data is literally my bread and butter EVERY day (I am not a macroeconomist, but I am an economist). And it is the bread and butter of many of us. Give us some credit, an overwhelming majority of us are not conservative ideologues. And if you really want to know how it works, HOW we learn things from data (in macro and elsewhere) I can provide references.

viburnum 6y ago

You may believe what you do sincerely but if you believed otherwise then someone else would have had your job.

viburnum 6y ago

Samuelson literally self-censored his textbook in the wake of the Mccarthyite campaign against Lorie Tarshis. A similar campaigned blocked Galbraith from chairing the department at the University of Illinois. One thing Cowen has in common with Hayek and Mises is his university salary is supplied by the inherited wealth of conservative activists.