David Henderson on Disagreeable Economists

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

Ethics, Philosophy, Economics, Books, Science, Business, Courses, Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Interviews, Education, History

4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2007

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Henderson, editor of the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics and a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about when and why economists disagree. Harry Truman longed for a one-armed economist, one willing to go out on a limb and take an unequivocal position without adding "on the other hand...". Truman's view is often reflected in the public's view that economic knowledge is inherently ambiguous and that economists never agree on anything. Henderson claims that this view is wrong--that there is substantial agreement among economists on many scientific questions--while Roberts wonders whether this consensus is getting a bit frayed around the edges. The conversation highlights the challenges the everyday person faces in trying to know when and what to believe when economists take policy positions based on research. Is it biased or science?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	another information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you. My guest today is David Henderson, a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover
0:41.2	Institution, and an associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in
0:45.8	Monterey, California. He's the author of the joy of freedom, a wonderful book on the economics
0:50.9	of various policy issues, and he's the editor of the concise and cyclopedia of economics at the
0:56.1	Library of Economics and Liberty that is available in print and online, and it's being revised and
1:01.4	should be available the revision in December of 2007. David, welcome to Econ Talk. Thanks Russ.
1:08.2	What I want to talk with you about today, David, is the idea that there's a core set of views that
1:15.6	economists hold a consensus toward a wide variety of issues, and whether that's true or not, whether
1:21.4	economists basically agree or basically disagree. Are we a real science with a set of established
1:30.2	truths, or are we a little bit less reliable than that? I want to start with a common joke, which I
1:36.3	hate. You probably hate it too, which is that if you took all the economists in the world and you
1:41.9	laid them in to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion. I think it was the Truman line. He's
1:48.2	looking for the one hand at economists. He won't always be hedging and saying, on the other hand,
1:53.0	and he's kind of this sort of folk wisdom, humor, whatever you want to call it. I think leads people
1:58.9	to conclude and is based on a view that economists don't really agree on anything. It's anything
2:04.4	goes in economics. Do you think that's true? No, I don't. In fact, that's why I also hate the joke.
2:11.6	It's true that people that economists have different values often, but they often share the
2:18.5	same views on analysis. So, for example, on rent control, the vast majority of economists agree
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Library of Economics and Liberty, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Library of Economics and Liberty and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.