40 Economists Agree

Chicago's Booth School has put together a wonderful resource: a panel of economic experts called on to state their opinions on a variety of policy-relevant questions, along with their confidence in those opinions. I also love that folks can reply that they are highly confident in their response of "uncertain"; sometimes, the data is insufficient to the task, and we can be confident in that we don't know.

So, where do economists agree?

• Technological change affecting differentially the returns to different skills is one of the leading causes of rising US income inequality. Weighted by confidence, 34% strongly agree and 54% agree. Moreover, simply increasing the top marginal tax rate is exceedingly unlikely to make a substantive dent in the deficit, though small increases would raise more money.


• Shifting to a gold standard would worsen price stability and employment outcomes for the average American. Massive consensus here: zero percent of the panel agreed, agreed, or were uncertain, that shifting to the gold standard would make things better. Everybody said it's a bad idea, or a really bad idea. Weighted by confidence, 66% "strongly disagreed" that outcomes would improve.


• Congestion charges are a fantastic idea. Nobody disagreed.


• Carbon taxes are more efficient than CAFE standards for achieving CO2 reductions.


• Shifting from drug prohibition to to legalization and taxation would reduce social costs. Weighted by confidence, 35% strongly agreed, 44% agreed, 20% were uncertain, and 2% disagreed. Bob Hall was the one dissenter, with this justification: "My limited understanding is that there is evidence of harm from cannabis." Of course there is.


• America's policy of preferential tax treatment for employer provided health care causes distortion.


• "Buy American" mandates do not have significant positive impact on US manufacturing employment.


• Getting rid of the home mortgage interest deduction, with compensating changes elsewhere in the tax system, would improve the efficiency of home financing decisions.


• Shifting to vouchers would likely, but not necessarily, improve schooling outcomes. The median respondent, weighted by confidence, was uncertain, but there's more mass on the agree side than the disagree side.

There are other questions at the site; go have a look. 

I'd draw from this that government by technocratic economists would never shift to a gold standard, would immediately implement congestion charging, put in place a carbon tax while abolishing CAFE, abolish the home mortgage interest deduction and preferential tax treatment of employer-provided health care, get rid of "Buy American" mandates, and very likely legalize marijuana and put it under an excise regime like that used for alcohol or tobacco. They'd also likely consider broader trials on vouchers so we could move from uncertainty to confidence.

Dilbert's Scott Adams ought to adopt this set of policies in his independent run for the Presidency. 

Weitzman at Canterbury

Coming up at the University of Canterbury:

Professor Adrian Sawyer, Acting Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the College of Business and Economics and Dean of Commerce, warmly invites you to attend the 7^th Annual Condliffe Memorial Lecture, ‘Why is the economics of climate change so difficult and controversial?  The lecture will be delivered by Martin Weitzman, Professor in Economics at Harvard University.  Event details and an outline of the seminar are provided below.

Date:            Thursday 17^th November 4.30pm – 5.30pm. Refreshments to follow

Venue:         Law 108, Ground floor, Law Building, University of Canterbury

RSVP:          by 10^th November to karen.ashby@canterbury.ac.nz 

Abstract:In this lecture Professor Weitzman will focus on the special features of the economics of climate change that make this area so very difficult to analyse by conventional economic tools.  He will discuss such topics as deep structural uncertainty, whose preferences are included, the possibility of catastrophic outcomes, discounting the distant future, and international public goods.  Professor Weitzman will speculate on how the dilemmas of climate change might play themselves out. 

Biography:Martin L. Weitzman is Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Previously he was on the faculties of MIT and Yale. He has been elected as a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published widely in many leading economic journals and written two books. Weitzman's interests in economics are broad and he has served as consultant for several well-known organisations. His current research is focused on environmental economics, including climate change, the economics of catastrophes, cost-benefit analysis, long-run discounting, green accounting, and comparison of alternative instruments for controlling pollution. We look forward to seeing you on the 17^thof November.

I'll be there and I hope to see many of you there too.

Earthquake Economists Wanted

CERA, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Agency, is looking for an economist.

The position of Economist is a senior level role that reports to the General Manager, and is required to contribute to the development and implementation of plans originating from the Recovery Strategy, including the overarching Economic Recovery plan.

The Economist is responsible for ensuring a strengthened economic focus across CERA, advising and influencing work programmes and outputs. Working closely with key stakeholders, a focus is to ensure the right conditions are in place to encourage and support economic recovery and growth.

Key deliverables will include developing priorities and programmes that partner with the economic efforts of private business, collaborating with central and local government to ensure the recovery is business friendly. The Economist is expected to inject commercial savvy and apply an economic lens to set priorities, develop high quality strategic level analysis, policy development, methodologies and frameworks. Essentially, this role will lead and oversee work based on identification of economic and financial impact of proposals, market drivers, opportunities and threats to progress.

We are seeking an Economist who is experienced at a senior level, well networked and highly credible across the economic sector. You will have a track record of success when developing economic advice, leading consultation, planning and management of projects with key interdependencies and trade-offs. This opportunity presents a unique opportunity to join a skilled and passionate team committed to making a real difference for all who live and work in greater Christchurch.

There are a half-dozen economists I can imagine doing this job well and rather more that I can imagine doing it badly. Let's hope they pick one of the good ones.

Here's the full position description for those interested in helping out.

Freypeats

It just keeps getting worse for Bruno Frey.

I can't help but wonder though how many folks would survive similar examination. As we strive towards the "least publishable unit" as the optimum rather than articles that exhaust a particular line of investigation, there's always going to be substantial overlap in material across journal articles. The literature review and contextualization will be similar. Maybe the next iteration of the paper has a specification or two that weren't included in the first published version. But the main thrust of the results are similar.

Eventually, somebody will run EconLit, JSTOR and SSRN through TurnItIn. And the results won't be good.