Economists' political preference

While we're sitting in the old ivory tower, some economists are out there in the real world. They're very different from the academics, in their work and their demographics. The Wall Street Journal runs periodic surveys of private-sector economic forecasters; here's a bit from January:

"On the political front, most of the respondents expect a Democrat to be elected president this year, although they personally prefer a Republican."

Contrast this with the academic economists; here's the summary from a 2003 survey of members of the American Economic Association, one of the big "trade groups" of academic economists:

"The responses show that most economists are supporters of safety regulations, gun control, redistribution, public schooling, and anti-discrimination laws. They are evenly mixed on personal choice issues, military action, and the minimum wage. Most economists oppose tighter immigration controls, government ownership of enterprise and tariffs. In voting, the Democratic:Republican ratio is 2.5:1."

The academics seem like "social liberals", but I'd bet both the academics and the private-sector economists are "fiscal conservatives" (with apologies for possibly bastardizing the political terminology). Perhaps it relates to the liberal-friendly character of academia, the subject of the study I cited here. Here's another result from the survey of the forecasters:

"Some 56% of the economists disapproved of President Bush's stewardship of the economy, while 44% approved. That is especially startling considering 59% of the economists said the stock market performs better under Republican presidents, compared with 28% who said it favored Democrats."

The Republican preference of the private-sector economists does seem to be grounded in their beliefs about the effect of the political climate on the financial sector. Academic economists, by and large, don't care a lot about what's happening in the financial sector (or, indeed, about anything that might be identified as "economics" by a layperson). The first-guess potted conclusion is probably that the non-academics care about the financial ship - which is indeed their livelihood - enough that they want a Republican to steward it, while the academics care more about politics that isn't economic policy, where they prefer Democrats.