Another front in the war between ideologies. Economists’ petitions:
Policy entrepreneurs often organize petitions and recruit economists to sign on. An analysis of the petitions shows how fundamental ideology really is. In particular, the analysis shows how powerful the idea of liberty is in drawing lines.
With Carrie Milton, we studied all economist petitions since 1994. Each petition is about a specific issue, but the range is vast, including, for example, tax cuts, health care, cap-and-trade, immigration, protectionism, card-check, and the minimum wage.
Each petition advises a course of action. We classified each petition by whether it would augment liberty (for example, a petition against protection) or reduce liberty (for example, raising the minimum wage). There were 15 pro-liberty petitions and 13 anti-liberty petitions.
We compiled all the signatures. On the 28 petitions there were 9,532 signatures representing 5,884 individuals. The number of signatures on all 15 pro-liberty petitions was almost twice that on the 13 anti-liberty petitions.
The remarkable thing is that virtually every single economist who is active in signing petitions leans heavily in one direction or the other.
