Economist Poll of Economists
The overall sample of The Economist’s poll of economists turns up plenty of Democrats and lots of independents but few self-identifying Republicans, so it’s not clear what the overall results really tell you. But the internals are interesting:
The detailed responses are bad news for Mr McCain (the full data are available here). Eighty per cent of respondents and no fewer than 71% of those who do not cleave to either main party say Mr Obama has a better grasp of economics. Even among Republicans Mr Obama has the edge: 46% versus 23% say Mr Obama has the better grasp of the subject. “I take McCain’s word on this one,” comments James Harrigan at the University of Virginia, a reference to Mr McCain’s infamous confession that he does not know as much about economics as he should. In fairness, Mr McCain’s lower grade may in part reflect greater candour about his weaknesses. Mr Obama’s more tightly managed image leaves fewer opportunities for such unvarnished introspection. [...]
The economists also prefer Mr Obama’s tax plans. Republicans and respondents who do not identify with either political party see Mr McCain’s tax policies as more efficient but less equitable. But the former prefer Mr McCain’s plans—43% of Republicans say they are good or very good—and the latter Mr Obama’s. Of non-affiliated respondents, 31% say Mr Obama’s are good or very good.
The overall leftward tilt of the profession goes somewhat against the image of economics as dominated by free marketers and, I suppose, in part reflects the conservative coalition’s steady alienation of educated professionals everywhere.
33 Responses to “Economist Poll of Economists”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 5th, 2008 at 11:36 am
If I remember correctly, the Economist did a similar survey in 2000 and the sample was much more Republican than today… So I would pen that one on the conservative coalition’s alienation of educated professionals everywhere-even economists.
October 5th, 2008 at 11:40 am
I’m a econ grad student and I have to say the image that economics is a rightward leaning profession is totally, completely wrong. Frankly, the results of this survey should surprise no one who has ever spent time within the economics department of a major university. The party breakdown in the survey roughly matches my own impression.
Do not mistake the Wall Street Journal editorial pages for speaking for the rest of us.
October 5th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Obama is not left.
Increasingly over the last 5-10 years I’ve been running into Utopian, cornucopian Republican free-marketers who hate economics and replace it with magical thinking. Luskin is an example. After spending 30+ years pissed off at economics’ center-right/right slant, for 6 years I saw the whole government dominated by these Utopians. It’s quite understandable that economists would migrate to Obama, but they’re still center-left at best, but mostly center-right or worse.
October 5th, 2008 at 11:49 am
The overall leftward tilt of the profession goes somewhat against the image of economics as dominated by free marketers
I think you’re confused here. Where on earth does anything in the article suggest that economists are not “free marketers”? I’m as “free market” as you can get, and I would say Obama’s economic and tax plans would be better for the economy than McCain’s. The Republican Party’s economic and fiscal policy over the last couple decades has seriously diverged from actual “free market” principles.
October 5th, 2008 at 11:58 am
This remind me of the obvious riposte to why academics are generally liberal: Because we’re smart. That’s pretty much regardless of specialty.
October 5th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Sorry for posting again so soon but John Emerson had not posted yet when I started typing my first comment. I agree completely with his comment about magical thinking among many Republicans these days.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Expanding on Just Dropping By’s point above, if you look at your post, Conservatism = Debt, should it be that surprising that today’s economists tilt left? Conservative economic principles have been shown, by and large, to be failures that don’t provide the results they predict. I would expect economists to have a healthy respect for empirical evidence, so a neutral-to-lewftward tilt doesn’t surprise me in the least.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I was at a conference this weekend, and I mentioned that I very rarely see conservative-leaning economists. My adviser said, “Yeah, when Milton Friedman died, it went down by 50%…”
October 5th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
To build on the point I think Just Dropping By was trying to make, “Free Market” does not equal “Republican Policy”, nor is it even prevailing economic dogma. Economists understand better than anyone that markets don’t always work the way they are supposed to, that free trade does not provide an advantage for everyone (as we would say trade libralization is never a pareto-improvement in the short-run)… I could go on, but the point is that republican economic dogma is based on 50 year-old models (at best) that don’t reflect current thinking.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Remember: if you live in Alaska, you can actually see the economy for there. Or polar bears. Or something.
October 5th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
No, that’s exactly backwards. American policy has moved so far right over the last 30 years, even our so-called left is center-right by global standards. It’s time for our proudly free-market American pundits to realize they were never the smartest guys in the room. They just caught a case of hubris and crashed our economy.
October 5th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Economists understand better than anyone that markets don’t always work the way they are supposed to, that free trade does not provide an advantage for everyone
The majority of economists are both pro-obama *and* pro-free trade. This poll which was linked by Yglesias a few weeks ago shows that although on most issues economists prefer Obama, they prefer McCain’s position on international trade (which is free trade)
The disconnect is easily resolved by a combo of what the economists are prioritizing, what the economists’ think that Obama will prioritize, and no doubt some notion that much Obama’s position on trade is just election rhetoric.
October 5th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Just to echo bse’s first point, as someone whose undergraduate degree was in economics, I rarely came across an out-and-out wingnut among the faculty. (But then again, I didn’t attend the University of Chicago.) You can draw an analogy to the supposed global warming debate. The academic community is pretty much in agreement as to its causes, but a rather tiny minority of scientists have had a disproportionate impact on public policy. In both cases, one simply has to follow the money.
The major difference between the hard sciences and economics is the large degree of complexity and uncertainty in the latter. The greater that uncertainty, the easier it is for the fundamentalists and self-serving to exploit. That’s why the frauds and charlatans eventually leave academia for greener pastures. (see Phil Gramm, oily career path of)
October 5th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Why is it a less informative poll because Democratic economists make up such a large fraction of the sample? Most of the studies that I have come across suggest that this breakdown is representative of the larger profession. Indeed, business economists also lean Democratic, though not to the same degree that academic economists do. It might be the case that academic economists, being immersed in the left-liberal culture of academia, have embraced some of the values characteristic of that culture. Still, we often meet with the suggestion of right-leaning economists that regardless of one’s values, Democratic initiatives in large part bespeak a failure to understand economics. The fact that this sample of economists is so unified in their support for Democratic proposals indicates that such ideas are respectable from the perspective of economics if one does, in fact, adhere to liberal values. In other words, polls like this (of which there are a number) reinforce the intellectual credentials of the Democratic platform, as compared with the Republican platform.
October 5th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Most economists have always seen some role for government intervention. 10 years ago this was an acceptable Republican viewpoint, now it is not. The spectrum has vastly shifted in this country. Remember that in the 90’s, Clinton’s economic policies of free-trade and and less regulation (NAFTA, telecommunications act of 1996, etc) were basically the same as a moderate Republican. These days, his views are labeled as far far left.
As Mexican-Americans in the southwest are prone to say, “I didn’t cross the border, the border crossed me. Something similar can be said for economists. Nowadays anything short of pure Austrian economics is considered liberal. To be a member of the GOP you have to favor chopping up regulations with a chainsaw.
Throw in the fact that NAFTA, the California Energy deregulation, and telecom deregulation act of 1996 didn’t play out as expected and some economists probably did shift to the left a bit.
Take Paul Krugman as an example. Here is a guy who worked in the Reagan White House (admittedly as a technocrat), worked (briefly) for Enron, and thought Clinton’s early policy ideas did not support free trade enough. Nader hated him for being pro-globalization, and now he’s considered a leftmost extremist by the GOP despite the fact that there haven’t been any drastic changes in his positions.
October 5th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Re: Most economists have always seen some role for government intervention. 10 years ago this was an acceptable Republican viewpoint, now it is not.
The GOP is not– I repeat is NOT, for laissez faire and against market interventions (Exhibit A: the Paulson bailout bill just passed). The GOP is foot-stomping in favor of any regulation or market intervention that benefits or is desired by faithful GOP vassal corporations and donors.
October 5th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
“The overall sample of The Economist’s poll of economists turns up plenty of Democrats and lots of independents but few self-identifying Republicans, so it’s not clear what the overall results really tell you.”
I guess it tells you that Democratic economic policies are more appealing to actual economists. That seems like information to me, not noise to be removed from the results.
October 5th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I think it useful to make a distinction between Capitalism and Magical Capitalism. After Ronald Reagan became president, Republicans quit believing in Capitalism and substituted for it a belief in Magical Capitalism. As a result, we’ve had 28 years running of idiocy from the Right.
October 5th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/10/whats-wrong-wit.html
October 5th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
America has a center-right party and a radical-right party; the poll results, from a global political perspective, should not surprise…..
October 6th, 2008 at 8:48 am
As everyone else is pointing out, the fact that economists these days tend not to be Republicans doesn’t show that there aren’t still a decent number of relatively libertarian-minded economists. It just shows that the Republicans have lost a lot of appeal for the libertarian-minded.
Incidentally, I think this was a little silly:
Obama taught at The University of Chicago, and his closest associates there included Cass Sunstein and his current economics guru Austan Goolsbee. So I think it is just true that Obama is relatively familiar with economics for a politician, and accordingly the fact that economists know that isn’t attributable to Obama’s lack of “candour” (indeed, if anything, I think Obama has been playing down his academic credentials).
October 10th, 2008 at 2:44 am
The fact that there are some economist above that have equated republican or any administration’s economic policies with “free trade” belies the idea that any of them are “smart.” Everywhere I look it is constant intervention through subsidies, monetary policy, taxation, and regulation.
It is no mistake that the most productive sectors of our economy are the least regulated, but make no mistake the inexorable push towards socialism which puts power (and subsequently wealth) into the hands of the elites will continue. Ironically, China and India will probably surpass us in terms of open market principals and ultimately in economic efficiency as well.
October 28th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
wow, do any of you people even understand economics? All I see is a bunch of bickering fools with absolutely no logic whatsoever. Did anyone ever beat Milton Friedman in a debate? No, his death simply allowed Keynesians to spawn and multiply without the fear of being absolutely crushed. Please, will somebody read Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell and then tell me we need more government intervention.
Obama wants to tax corporations. McCain does not. Any true economics knows that by taxing corporations, you are only speeding up the process of offshoring. By NOT taxing them, they are more likely to stay. Everybody KNOWS that cutting the capital gains tax increases revenue. That is why Clinton had a surplus, because he cut it from 28 percent to 20. Please, give me facts rather than spewing ideology and filling your heads with false pride.
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:56 am
orvartadr
December 28th, 2008 at 3:07 am
http://www.message_ricrelrota.com/
January 11th, 2009 at 5:10 am
http://www.batteryfast.com/
http://www.batteryfast.co.uk/
March 17th, 2009 at 2:36 am
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
tramadol
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:34 am
tramadol
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:39 am
buy viagra online
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:46 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:28 am
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 14th, 2009 at 9:40 am
I rarely comment on blogs but yours I had to stop and say Great Blog!!
viagra
April 16th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
How are you.
I am from Sudan and also am speaking English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “A consumer review site showing how to find airline ticket bargains online.”
Thanks
. Lap.