Evening Must-Read: Is Economics a Discipline?

Simon Wren-Lewis: Economic standards: “I have used the following analogy before, but it remains pertinent. Imagine you are an academic scientist who is genuinely sceptical about climate change. I have met them so I know they exist. You are asked… whether the current spell of cold weather disproves man made global warming. Perhaps you are tempted to say yes, or ‘yes, although’, because it would encourage scepticism.

But I’m almost certain you would instead say ‘of course not’… [and] then give… a little lecture about probabilities, averages, trends… the same answer that a scientist who believes in climate change would give. You do not give the wrong answer just because it is convenient to your overall argument, because you are an academic and a scientist. You have standards.

Now imagine (maybe you do not need to) that you are an economist and you are asked by a journalist “Has George Osborne’s “plan A” [fiscal austerity] been vindicated by the recovery in 2013?” There is only one correct answer to this question–no. It is the correct answer, even if you believe plan A is the right policy. I rather like the analogy that Chris Dillow recently used: “To give Osborne credit for the recovery is like praising a taxi-driver for getting us home when he has taken us on a two-hour detour.”… It is important to understand that this has nothing to do with whether Plan A was a good or bad policy. What a supporter of Plan A should reply is  “No, but I still believe Plan A is the right policy for the following reasons”….

I’m afraid this is an example of something we have seen before. When some economists enter a political arena (using political in its widest sense), there is a danger that they leave their scientific standards behind. Thankfully only two academics answered yes on this occasion, but many more city economists did so. So I should have been braver in my earlier post about the differences between academic and city economists–an explanation I should have added is that some city economists have lower scientific standards.

You could say I am naive to expect anything else… economic ideas are influenced by ideology, and it is foolish to pretend otherwise. But our reaction should be to expose these influences and try and reduce them, rather than shrugging our shoulders. What I refuse to accept is that economics cannot be an evidence-based discipline.

So, if the hypothesis is “Plan A is the appropriate policy” and the evidence is “the economy recovered in 2013”, any economist can only give one response: the evidence does not support the hypothesis. Just because the question is political does not justify saying otherwise. In fact, being in a political arena means it is all the more important to maintain scientific standards. That is why we call economics a discipline.