Regarding the motivations and incentives of the economics profession, I would like to point out that each of you who addressed my post chose to set forth theoretical arguments why academic economists would have impure incentives and motivations notwithstanding an apparent instutional incentive as pure as we are going to get, while entirely ignoring the issue of incentives with respect to political actors, where we must rely on theoretical arguments why a political actor might act in way contrary to the political institutional incentives, which are not as pure as we are going to get.
To put it another way, we have Rod Blagojevich, politician extraordinaire. Where is the actual example of the academic economist acting as the fine Governor? All you can do is speculate it is possible that there is an academic Blagojevich, but you point to no example. I, on the other hand, can point to lots of Blagojevichs. In fact, what about the esteemed Ms. Romer, who gets appointed to responsible office and suddenly discovers the efficacy of fiscal stimulus, which just happens to be consistent with the interests of her President and Party? I don't doubt there is academic groupthink, academics come with preconceived notions, etc. In fact, it is amazing that every academic on this list is consistently wrong on every important issue. But to think that it is more likely that political actors, cetis paribus, are better incentivized than academics to reach disinterested truth-seeking conclusions, and in fact that is what occurs? Please. David Shemano _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
