Academics are as described within universities and their respective professions. One difference among academics however is in their relation to the outside, especially government and industry.
Climate change is a good example. Incentives provided by both governments(e.g., Bush Administration, Merkel government) and industry (e.g., oil, plastics, etc.) are to understate the climate change problem. Yet the IPCC report of 2007, even after watered down by politicians, was alarming. The climate change scientists withstood the pressure, because the incentives provided by the government grants and the industry salaries were overcome by the scientific profession's own ethic. Economists on the other hand seem to face stronger incentives in government and industry. The lure of a top position in government or a high-paying job in industry seems to work differently on economists than the grants process in government or even the high-salary jobs do on climate-change scientists. >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 > > _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
