500 or more economists have put their signatures on a web site, Economists for Romney. The list is headlined by five economists who have won Nobel Prizes: Gary Becker, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Myron Scholes. In scanning down the list I noted the names of many economists familiar from the blogosphere or op-ed pages and an acquaintance of mine from many years ago.
This list has evoked sharp criticism from fellow economist Laurence Kotlikoff:
Economics holds itself out as a science, yet here we have supposedly impartial scientists declaring that all of Romney’s proposed economic policies are good and that everything the president has done on the economics front has been misguided and flawed.
No impartial economist would make such blanket assertions. By their very nature, such statements represent political, not scientific, opinion. Yet the signatories not only identified themselves as professional economists; they also specified their university or other institutional affiliations, thereby implicating places such as the University of Chicago in their political pronouncements.
Dr. Kotlikoff also mentions several economists, e.g. Paul Krugman and Glenn Hubbard, by name as being engaged in ethically questionable actions.
I have been unable to identify an explicit, formal code of ethics for economists. Such things have been bandied about from time to time but I don’t believe there is an actual, formal, accepted code of ethics. There is, however, such a code for university professors. Here’s what would appear to be the relevant portion:
As members of their community, professors have the rights and obligations of other citizens. Professors measure the urgency of these obligations in the light of their responsibilities to their subject, to their students, to their profession, and to their institution. When they speak or act as private persons, they avoid creating the impression of speaking or acting for their college or university. As citizens engaged in a profession that depends upon freedom for its health and integrity, professors have a particular obligation to promote conditions of free inquiry and to further public understanding of academic freedom.
Dr. Kotlikoff does have a point but IMO not only is economists’ threatening the reputation of their chosen field of study but that particular horse bolted the paddock when academics participated in and even organized student protests in the 60s. That horse has already left the barn, has been out frolicking in the fields for years, and is on the cusp of dying of old age.
How, for example, do you explain the conduct of Lawrence Summers? If published accounts are true, not only did Dr. Summers groom his economic advice to suit what he perceived as political realities and the policy preferences of his patrons, he ensured that dissenting views from other economists within the Obama Administration were squelched.
Sounds a bit like a hissy fit from Kotlikoff.
Physicians have a code of conduct. Investors, like me, have fiduciary duties well defined in law.
As long as an economist identifies his or her opinion as political, not scientific, I really don’t have a problem. Krugman is a perfect case in point. Anyone who doesn’t understand he is a political advocate (and idiot, heh, sorry) just isn’t paying attention. Yes, he traffics in his economic credentials, but I don’t think he violates any implicit trust. It’s all upfront.
Perhaps to advance the thread, it is in fact an interesting point to differentiate economic science from political view. Wow. It’s hard. They are inherently intertwined in certain facets.
People who actually pay any attention to what I write will recall that at U of C I took my economics course from Kevin Murphy, a young kid at the time, and whom has blossomed into a prominent economist, featured just as I started to comment on this blog with his quasi-numerical analysis of the fiscal stimulus in 2008/9.
Here is an anecdote that says it all. So I’m sitting in his class, and he’s going on and on about the minimum wage. And he says “so how can an economist defend the minimum wage? (pause) Because they aren’t economists!!”
Perfect. Is that science? (yes, it is) or political.
There you have it.