People’s will vs. “sound economic thinking”
Luigi Zingales argues that economists should help design a system that conforms to people’s preferences:
The solution is not for economics to abandon the mathematical rigor, but to re-connect itself with the other social sciences. Philosophy purports to be about the search for absolute truth. However, once we realize that not only the search process, but also the very notion of absolute truth differs from period to period, the “truth” loses its absolute nature. Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce calls this process historicizing philosophy. Economics not only needs to be historicized, but also sociologized and even politicized, in the higher sense of embedding it in political science, not of making it an instrument of partisan politics.
The Political Limits of Economics
Author: Luigi Zingales
From: University of Chicago
“Prosocial” lying
Would economists have preferred that Ben Bernanke tell the truth about the threats to the US and world economy in the early days of the crisis of 2008, when doing so might have destabilized financial markets further?
George DeMartino explains that economists often deceive and even outright lie, when they believe doing so is warranted by the public interest. But such prosocial lying risks the profession’s own delegitimization and undermines its ability to contribute to social betterment.
Should Economists Tell the Truth? Pro-Social Lying, Paternalism, and the Ben Bernanke Problem
Author: George DeMartino
From: University of Denver
