Economics isn’t like that. And for that reason, the claim that economics is a True Science (e.g. Lazear) is just wrong. Economists are talented, knowledgeable, skilled advocates, and at critical moments you really need a good one on your side, but they’re not scientists the way physicists are.

We have an example of economics being like that in this very thread. If you ask an economist whether free trade is always good, the answer is yes. Free trade is always better than any government regulation of trade. Further, it is known that even when a foreign government regulates their nation’s trade with us, we are still always better off if our own government does no regulation.

If you shop around long enough you can find economists such as Herman Daly who disagree. But there’s a broad consensus, to the point that most commenters on economics blogs are completely unwilling to question the idea.

Welcome to the real world, dude. Economists never do that, ever, so when I do it I’m bringing evil into the garden of Eden. Seriously, I’m really just trying to shake economists out of their unrealistic idealism and innocence. They’re so pure of heart it’s scary.

Because certainly, absolutely, beyond all shadow if a doubt no economist ever tweaked the evidence to make an anti-minimum-wage argument. That just never would happen. It’s really a blessing that the economics profession is so vigilant about expunging advocacy from their profession.

The victim, as I said, was not Card. Card moved on to other things and did fine. The victim is the general public, especially everyone negatively affected by the distortion of the dialogue on the minimum wage.

In discussions of this type I’m always told that there’s some person somewhere who’s doing the right thing. As I’ve said, I object to the idea that if a profession has the right answer in there somewhere, it’s OK that it has a lot of wrong answers too.

If I want an opinion on a question about physics, I don’t really have to shop around. A good physicist will be able tell me whether there’s an answer to my question, and if there is an answer, he can tell me what it is.

Economics isn’t like that. And for that reason, the claim that economics is a True Science (e.g. Lazear) is just wrong. Economists are talented, knowledgeable, skilled advocates, and at critical moments you really need a good one on your side, but they’re not scientists the way physicists are.

DS:

In so much as this is true, how on earth is “mainstream” orthodox “neoclassical” economics different from any other school or heterodox branch of economics?

It isn’t. There are hacks of all colours, and obviously it’s better to be a hack in the service of sensible social democratic politics than either the Washington Consensus or Stalinism. But also, it’s important to recognise and honour the people who aren’t hacks, like Krugman (usually) and who say true things that are inconvenient.

Are you really saying there’s no meaningful difference in the economics and view of markets between Brad DeLong and say Milton Friedman?

I don’t think I actually said that, but B-Del has certainly written lots of encomia to Milton Friedman – I’ve written a couple of blog posts on the general subject of the extent to which Brad in particular and economists in general extend far more benefit of the doubt to Friedman than they should.

That puts me in the company of people like Michael Walzer. Who is of. course a total rightwing chickenhawk.irony

What part of the manifesto do you disagree with?

I have explicitly acknowledged the comparative advantage metaphor and the possibility that there might be ways to apply it to real economies.

We’re probably referring to two different organizations. I’m talking about the organization based in Washington DC “The Center for Economic & Policy Research” not the London outfit.

Is ther an actual documented source where he says this explicitly? because I would like to read it.

First off I agree that this was a truly scandalous affair and shows how ideologically warped economics, or any social science can be, but people who bring up this story as a textbook (no pun) example of the supposedly perverse ideology within economics are stretching the incident & exploiting it for their own agendas. Nowhere, at least that I can find, where David Card says doing work on the minimum wage is detrimental to one’s career as an economist. If that were true, the dozens of economists who have since done empirical work on the real world effect of minimum wages in various industries and markets would be relegated to the

David Card did say his research cost him friends, primarily at his old haunts The University of Chicago, the most famously ideologically rigid econ department, but the idea that he was shunned or blacklisted by the entire econ world is a fiction. Moreover, for everyone waving the bloody shirt of Card in their own grudges against mainstream economics, they rarely mention how Card himself felt about the affair;

According to David Card in his own words;

I think economists who objected to our work were upset by the thought that we were giving free rein to people who wanted to set wages everywhere at any possible level. And that wasn’t at all the spirit of what we actually said. In fact, nowhere in the book or in other writing did I ever propose raising the minimum wage. I try to stay out of political arguments.

I think many people are concerned that much of the research they see is biased and has a specific agenda in mind. Some of that concern arises because of the open-ended nature of economic research. To get results, people often have to make assumptions or tweak the data a little bit here or there, and if somebody has an agenda, they can inevitably push the results in one direction or another. Given that, I think that people have a legitimate concern about researchers who are essentially conducting advocacy work.

So basically he was suspected by his fellow economists of unscientific advocacy work, not totally unjustly according to the man himself and for the more ideologically inclined Chicago Boyz, he had indeed comitted a grave sin. But many more economists saw the value in his work and of course as notsneaky pointed out, it was on the basis of this very work that Card was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, arguably the most prestigious prize in American Economics. Pretty generous for a bunch of reactionaries who allegedly blacklisted him. I wonder if that award will be contributive, or detrimental to his career.

dsquared

I don’t know what Brad did before he got a tenured position, but basically yes, unless you’re going to define “free market” in some utterly tendentious fashion. I’ve had about a thousand arguments with him about the Washington consensus. Brad certainly does define the very leftmost possible acceptable opinion for an economist to hold as being his own, and that’s a problem (PS you really are kidding yourself if you think Stiglitz holds a materially different view of the world from Brad’s).

Since Stiglitz wrote an entire book repudiating Brad DeLong’s view of the world (at least as it relates to International Economics) I’m not so sure. I have to say that when I hear the term “knee-jerk Free-Marketeer” Brad DeLong is not the first name that springs to mind. Especially not Stiglitz, who’s most famous body of work is establishing how inefficient markets really are. Are you really saying there’s no meaningful difference in the economics and view of markets between Brad DeLong and say Milton Friedman?, Gary Becker? That Stiglitz has more in common with these people than say, with Barkley Rosser? In this case I would like to see how you define “free market”

It is a fact, though, first hand from Card, that he believes that doing work on the minimum wage is detrimental to one’s career as an economist.

I think you are stretching it on this. First off I agree that this was a truly scandalous affair and shows how ideologically warped economics, or any social science can be, but people who rehash this story as a textbook (no pun) example of what’s wrong with economics are exploiting it for their own agendas. Nowhere, at least that I can find, where David Card says doing work on the minimum wage is detrimental to one’s career as an economist. If that were true, the dozens of economists who have since done empirical work on the real world effect of minimum wages in various industries and markets would be relegated to the

David Card did say his research cost him a lot of friends, primarily at his old haunts The University of Chicago, the most famously ideologically rigid econ department, but the idea that he was shunned or blacklisted by the entire econ world is a fiction. Moreover, for all

He said it cost him a lot of friends from economics and was pushing an agenda. Clearly evidence that all is not right within the confines of econ land. It’s inexcusable, but as notsneaky pointed out, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal for the very minimum wage work being discussed

It gives no hint at other arguments, perhaps you would revise the Wikipedia article to show the real arguments?

The principled alternative, mercantilism, was supported by a variety of people such as Alexander Hamilton. It is currently out of favor in the USA except for our military, who have preferred not to outsource work involving classified technology after they found japanese companies selling their secrets to the USSR. Hamilton attempted to protect US industry, opposing Adam Smith’s advice that the USA should focus on what we were good at—agriculture.

In the sense that he’s always stuck to simple, comprehensible models, visibly in the Keynesian tradition, rather than sticking bits and pieces of mathematics together to backward-justify a conclusion already reached.

the whole point here is that professional economists “really believe things to be true” which visibly aren’t, because they are “bought and paid for”, and as a result they are prepared to make the most extraordinary compromises with respect to their scientific and intellectual standards when they’re writing things which might be thought to support the political views that underpin the profession.

This basically seems to boil down to “neoclassical economics” is bad because it’s practitioners aren’t always honest, sometimes structure the data to fit an already desired conclusion, and occasionally tip the scales in their desired outcome’s favor. In so much as this is true, how on earth is “mainstream” orthodox “neoclassical” economics different from any other school or heterodox branch of economics? My understanding of the subject is necessarily limited and perhaps I’m being too reactionary, but in my perousal of the writings and works of the economic practicioners on the side of the angels, of a variety of schools, I find no reason to trust their work anymore than I would someone at the Cato Institute much less the apparantly bought and paid for lap dogs for capital teaching at our nation’s universities. Are you saying it’s all due to the institutional effect of the “Consumers of Economics?” If so I think you may be overestimating how much money is in commissioned “Free Markets are teh awesome!” research but even accepting that, certainly there must be areas where it doesn’t exist or where the incentive structure is even in reverse? Two institutions that are broadly cited in American Democratic party politics in particular are the Economic Policy Institute and to a lesser extent the Center for Economic Policy Research. Two anti free market, anti laissez-faire pro labor anti liberalized trade economics oriented think tanks that are largely funded by liberal/left interest groups and labor unions. Now I know labor and workers are the good guys and I can’t talk about the institutional power of “big labor” without giggling to myself but why is research on the alleged suckiness of international trade carried out by a group that’s funded by the AFL-CIO any more trust-worthy; less hackish than research on the alleged awesomeness of international trade carried out by a group that’s funded by bond traders and former IMF flacks?

And for that matter how much less/more dishonest or ideologically tainted is mainstream economics than the other major social sciences? Conceivably, the sociology department gets it’s funding from the same sources as the economics department.