With his substance, betting on it, Brian Kaplan posted a segment today from his latest book, the Invincible Book.
The segments are short so I recommend reading the whole thing.
One important paragraph:
Mainstream economics and free I don’t know that whatse’s two kinds of economists are like what is now. I know the stories of their lives, or at least their intellectual biographies. Despite their reputation as “neoliberal” they call mainstream economists the “free market.” These economists rarely experience free market sympathy. And it’s equally ridiculous to call free market economists the “mainstream” or “dominant” of their profession, despite winning several Nobel Prizes. Just because your peers are quoting doesn’t mean they will like you.
This reminded me of a subject that took place in one of my classes at Naval Graduate School about 20 years ago.
After my first few years at Naval Graduate School, I took something I had never tried early in my teaching. I concluded in advance that if we were scholars and they invited me to a poker game when the course was over, I would refuse to oppose the poker face. When the relay told me, for example, the minimum wage, my face said that things would be agitated to Dosée and the more important politicians. So I owned the first day to call my self a little rivarian. (By the way, when I first did this, I was shocked when I read the quarterly teacher ratings. It wasn’t a negative notice about revealing my political bias. To the extent they commented, they said it was refreshing to see him admit his bias and not taking action.
It happened 20 years ago. We were on track this quarter and showed students why free trade is a good fit for the Bock side. We have shown how rent management can lead to shortages and reduce the quantity and quality of homes. Why the gasoline lineup experienced by their parents is due to gasoline price control. The minimum wage prices the most skilled workers from the job market. And a lot of things.
Please remember that my students were military officers, usually between the ages of 28 and 40, all over the world. So they had a lot to do with them and they were quite aware of them politically.
One student said, “Wow, in light of what we’re learning, I’m sure there aren’t many democratic economists.”
I replied that I was looking at why he said that, but the reality was that the ratio of Republicans to Livenian economics professors was about 4:1.
He was unsure. Looking at the class, I realized that many of the students were equally unstable. How about this?
I didn’t have a good explanation. I said that many of them came to economics from mathematics and viewed economics as a technical field. They had no PhD. It was a program like me at UCLA and was typically involved in a small part of economics. That’s the best I’ve had. And maybe I give myself too much credit. I know I blamed mathematics, but I blamed narrow specialization.
Well, Brian Kaplan nails it. Here’s what he writes:
The typical mainstream economist biographies begin with traditional left-wing teenage intellectuals from middle-class homes. His parents and school are in the center left, but their complacent distracts him. They pay for lip service while he believes. In college, he discovers economics – and you make the world seem more complicated than he thought. Ultimately, budding economists conclude that some traditional leftist views are exaggerated or misunderstood. Rental management support is a typical example. If you don’t know economics, rent management sounds like a great idea. Do you want the poor to have affordable housing?[i] Passes are laws that require wealthy landlords to rent at affordable prices. Econ is a shortage, quality and loss, including major negative side effects of Rent Control. Politically, however, “some traditional leftist views have been exaggerated or Misterken” is the end of the normal line. If you start with traditional teenage intellectual left, undergraduate economics, you will become a slightly dominant 21 leftist intellectuals.
Certainly, for most students who fit this profile, intellectual curiosity is just a stage. They fall into an unintelligent job and turn to the left parents in the center. They may forget that some traditional left-wing views are exaggerated or misunderstood. But future mainstream economists will remain on the course. Shortly after earning undergraduate death, they proceed to graduate school, where they acquire two new skill sets.
First, they spend two years working on mathematical economic theory. This is a demanding material, but it is too much to shift Granstad’s views on economic policy. High theory shows dozens of esoteric ways for markets to fail, but doctoral students usually learnt the failure of all standard markets as undergraduates. If you are already deep and globally on imperfect competition, asymmetric information, and externalities, discovering obstacles to more exotic markets, the market is rarely reduced. [DRH note: did Bryan mean more?]
Second, unless they become pure theorists, graduates will be immersed in one or two bodies of superspecific empirical research. This immersion sometimes changes policy views within the economist’s field of expertise. However, the amount of research is so large that most economists don’t become men than narrow topics of expertise, so the biggest effect is small. In all other fields, mainstream doctoral students graduate with roughly the same policy view they held when they first started graduate school. Minor adjustments aside, that’s where they stay for other ESIR carriers. They move from traditional teenage leftist intellectuals to slightly more courses to 21 leftist intellectuals and slightly dominant leftist intellectuals. Perhaps they have a true view of economic policy of courses in some of the hyper-specific areas they know best. Otherwise, mainstream economists will hardly link their life’s work to economic policy. When poly comes out, most people take off these reesarcucer hats and wear these sligly-contrarrarian left wing technical hats.
Incidentally, at UCLA, graduate students had a soy moment when they read the ingredients they began talking between themselves along this same puzzle. Ted Fletch (in fact, Harry Edward Fletch III) a graduate student of my age, did that well. He said that Alamet doesn’t occur in smart economists that there is a close connection between economics and the real world. I still remember Ted’s QUIP. “Paul Samuelson returns home from work and his wife tells him that the price of the steak has risen by 50 cells.
