Visiting the real world

Economists don't spend a great deal of time in the real world. We're especially bad at having arguments, which is strange, considering that we have an infinitely flexible method and a bunch of unanswerable normative questions.

Unfortunately we're all adrift on the ocean of economic science. The work that researchers do generates the kind of tedious methodological debates that help seminar audiences catch up on their sleep, but it doesn't generate actual ideological debate: perhaps that's the biggest possible endorsement of positivism in economics, but we didn't need to lose it.

I always liked the Oxford Review of Economic Policy; it's one of the few examples of a true economic policy journal, which means that while it's still a bit dry, it's non-technical and, more to the point, actually talks about real stuff. For example, this issue from last year is a survey of what's going on with pensions - not exactly riveting, but if you're into that kind of thing, an invaluable look at how economic science can inform ideological debate on pension reform. This one does much the same for growth and development in India.

The saddest misconception about positivism in economics is that we must sweep out all normative debate in order to be "scientific". Yes, we have to avoid ideological prejudice when we research what's actually going on, but doesn't it seem like we're building a fancy machine and never turning it on? Our "scientific" results don't change the fact that our economic models don't provide any "answers" to the great normative questions of what we should be doing.

It all must be especially boring for the poor undergraduates who are the cannon fodder of scientific economics. They get the distilled versions of some of our scientific methods and modeling - without, mind, necessarily finding out about their flexibility - but don't get any practice in using economic analysis to engage in real policy debate. Perhaps it's another casualty of the loss of the essay in economics; perhaps that comes from our huge enrollments, victims of our own success.

Just because positive economic modeling is supposed to separate itself from ideology, it doesn't mean that economists should. Perhaps if we argued a bit more, we'd bring some life back to our discipline.