On Wed, 2009-01-14 at 15:39 -0800, David B. Shemano wrote: > Laurent Guerby writes: > > >> Why do you think economists are devoted to understanding our economy? > >> > >> If they're rational and smart they know that economics has no > >> predictive power whatsoever so they will instead sell their current > >> influence on politicians to interest groups who pay the highest price. > > Why do you think individuals go into academia and spend their time on > a topic creating models, teaching undergraduates, writing articles?
Academia is not uniform. I'm arguing that economists in academia have different incentives than physicists because economy and physics don't have *at all* the same status in society. Not much different from what I stated here is some analysis by Dean Baker: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=12&year=2008&base_name=apply_economics_to_economists > I have the feeling that you (and others on this list) are buying into > the notion that people who advocate ideas they agree with have good > motivations and people who advocate ideas they disagree with have bad > motivations. I believe such assumptions are a fallacy. Ad hominen. > >> Overall government official incentives are less skewed than economists > >> incentives, so more of them will have some care for the general > >> interest. > > I truly believe there is no theoretical or empirical support for your > statement and it is entirely counterintuitive. If the goal is truth > or even the "general interest", why would an academic, protected by > academic freedom with no pecuniary or other interest in the outcome of > a prediction, have worse incentives than a government official, who is > subject to the multitude of competing political interests? "no pecuniary or other interest" for an economist? Are you really thinking what you wrote? I'm curious about an experiment: try to invite for a talk in your average edu institution a top economist and a top physicist and compare conditions. Laurent _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
