How to Improve Journalism

Greg Mankiw's view: they don't take enough economics in college:

Greg Mankiw's Blog: How to Improve Journalism: There are probably many reasons why the quality of economics journalism is not better than it is, but an article in today's Wall Street Journal suggests one of the problems:

According to the forthcoming book "The American Journalist in the 21st Century," 36.2% of journalists with college degrees were journalism majors. If you include journalism-related "communications" majors, the percentage jumps to 49.5.... [T]there's a heavy emphasis on process and theory... classes such as Principles of Civic Journalism, Topics in Public Affairs Journalism or Industry Research Methods.

In short, many journalists simply do not have sufficient training to do a good job.

Here's my radical suggestion to the editors of the world: Require all your economics reporters to have an undergraduate degree in economics. And give a raise to those who spent the extra year or two getting a master's in economics as well. (We don't have such a program at Harvard, but there is a good one at the LSE.)

Economics is a technical field that cannot be easily learned on the fly. Unfortunately, that is often what economics journalists try to do.

I'm sure Greg's proposal would produce articles I would like a lot more. While (somewhat) sufficient, however, is it necessary? What proportion of the WSJ news reporters or the FT reporters were economics majors?

Comments

[liberal]

Given Mankiw's record of hackery, I'd say this is a pot-kettle-black kind of situation.

[Andrew]

Someone should tell Mankiw that this is what Nieman Fellowships are for. For example, Anthony Lewis used his time as a Niemen Fellow to take classes at Harvard Law School. He subsequently covered the Supreme Court and pick up a couple of Pulitzers.

(I tried to include links to the Wikipedia entries for Niemen Fellowships and Anthony Lewis, but they were stripped out.)

[marky]

I'm much more interested in having an economics requirement for the people who actually make the economic decisions.
Why should we accept have an economic illiterate like George W. Bush at the helm of a $10 trillion ecomomy?
I suppose there is no constitutional way of having literacy requirements for your elected leaders, but I find it an attractive idea nonetheless.

[andres]

But Brad, _which_ economics would be taught to these future journalists? Even if we ignore supply-side inanities, I do _not_ want business journalists to spout stupidities such as (a) cutting wages across the whole economy is the best, and possibly the only, way of reducing unemployment, (b) monetary policy is ineffective if it is correctly anticipated by observers, (c) a country in balance of payments trouble should concentrate on fiscal contraction even if its unemployment rate is in double digits. And yet all of these gaffes have been perpetrated by the mainstream of the economics profession at some point or another.

I agree that the quality of business and economics journalism leaves much to be desired, but the economics profession needs to simultaneously improve its own coherence even as it tries to improve the quality of journalism.

[wood turtle]

Journalists other than at WSJ or FT may be reporting on other issues as well, and to require a whole major for each subject reported on would seem totally unreasonable.

As part of a general liberal education, some economics would be desirable. A few math and statistics courses wouldn't hurt, for any field reported on.

For the journalism majors, a few courses in different areas such as the one that was taught the last semester for economics, would probably also be helpful.

[anne]

Reading a folder of columns by Anthony Lewis, I never imagined that he was not a lawyer and a Constitutional specialist at that, though I never thought to find out. There was a time when Lewis lectured to us, saying that an educated person could readily learn to report on specialties that belonged to others :)

[anne]

Can Anthony Lewis ever write :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/books/review/05lewis.html?ex=1296795600&en=b4219d5c33452abd&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

February 5, 2006

The Whirlwinds of Revolt
By ANTHONY LEWIS

We have had nothing like it in this country in living memory: a commanding moral voice, attached to no political party or public office, that moved governments and changed social institutions. That was Martin Luther King Jr.

He was despised by many. His ideas were sometimes rejected. He failed as well as succeeded. But he would not retreat from attacking what he came to believe were the three great afflictions of mankind: racism, war and poverty. In little more than a dozen years — from Dec. 5, 1955, when he set the Montgomery bus boycott on its way, to April 4, 1968, when he was murdered — he changed the face of America.

This is the last of three volumes in which Taylor Branch chronicles those years. It is a thrilling book, marvelous in both its breadth and its detail. There is drama in every paragraph. Every factual statement is backed up in 200 pages of endnotes.

"America in the King Years," Branch's running title for the trilogy, is not a mere conceit, a fancy way of describing a biography. It is not a biography of Dr. King. It is a picture of the country and the times as he intersected with them.

What a different country it was. I lived through those times, but "At Canaan's Edge" made me realize that I did not remember how different. It was before the revolution in women's roles, for example, as Branch tells us in a couple of quick sketches. Southerners had added a ban on sex discrimination to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a way to mock the bill, and at first it was widely treated as a joke. A Page 1 article in The New York Times in 1965 raised the question whether executives must let a "dizzy blonde" drive a tugboat or pitch for the Mets. In 1966 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission wondered, in a newsletter, whether an employer could be penalized for refusing to hire "a woman as a dog warden."

But of course it is the virulence of Southern racism at that time that is most striking. This was only 40 years ago, after the passage of the 1964 act, but racist violence and murder were still widespread in the Deep South. Everyone knew who the killers were, but juries would not convict — all-white juries. The openness of the violence was staggering. When Viola Liuzzo, a white woman, came down from Michigan to Selma, Ala., to help in the protest movement, a Ku Klux Klan gang pulled up alongside the car she was driving and shot her dead.

Branch has been working on these books for more than 20 years, exploring endless materials: newspapers, audiotapes, reports, books, personal memories. He has an incredible command of it all, bringing history to life with a few sentences here, extended chapters there on something like the march from Selma to Montgomery. I can pick out only a few themes to indicate the scope of his work.

Selma was about a basic right explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution, the right to vote without discrimination. In Alabama, Mississippi and large parts of other states in the Deep South, the right was a myth for blacks. They were threatened, abused, even murdered if they tried to register or vote; they often lost their homes or their jobs. Armed white mobs menaced them.

It was in the face of those tactics that King decided to lead a march from Selma to Montgomery as a protest for the vote. At the first attempt marchers were brutalized, the march turned back. But they persisted. Branch, usually given to understatement, lets himself go and speaks of "yearnings and exertions toward freedom seldom matched since Valley Forge."

Before a second attempt could be made to march to Montgomery, a difficulty intervened. Judge Frank M. Johnson enjoined the march because of likely violence. Johnson was a highly respected federal judge who had made many decisions in favor of civil rights. Justice Department officials pleaded with King not to violate the order lest he sacrifice the movement's reliance on law and the Constitution. But the protesters, many of them, did not want to give way. King did not say what he would do. The march began. He led it onto the Pettus Bridge at the edge of Selma, faced 500 state troopers — and suddenly turned and led the marchers back into Selma. He had made the point and desisted, obeying the law.

There followed a remarkable episode. Judge Johnson was now asked to let the march go forward and enjoin interference with it. But in a telephone conversation with the United States attorney general, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, he said he would not do so unless the federal government undertook to protect the marchers. And he wanted that assurance from the president, he said. Katzenbach gave him the assurance. Lyndon B. Johnson called the Alabama National Guard into federal service and sent regular Army detachments. On their third try, the marchers made it to Montgomery.

King believed that if Americans outside the South were aware of its brutal racism — as few then were — they would want to end it. The violent response to nonviolent protest made the brutality plain....

[Timothy Francis Sullivan]

Economic literacy would be a great topic for democrats to push in the 08 election. They would be free to hurl derision/infective (a tool dems haven't used at all) on the subject of Republican econonomic competence, confident that, as far as the Bush administration and the Republican Congress goess, they were not exaggerating.

When the right accused the dems of "going negative," dems would respond "We are not going negative. We are telling the truth," then repeat, over and over.

[anne]

Ah, on economics :)

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/05/did_the_bush_ta.html#c17490530

Alan Gertler, Reno, Nev.: I'm a scientist, not an economist, so I'm fairly naive when it comes to what drives the economy. My question is this: Have the tax cuts stimulated the economy as claimed (which I don't believe given the past cases of Reagan and Bush senior), or has it been the willingness of the government to continue massive spending by increasing our debt that has led to the growth of the economy?

Paul Krugman: It's actually neither. About the Bush tax cuts: the tax cuts of 2001 evidently didn't do the job; these days, the Bush people talk about the economy as if history began in the middle of 2003, after their SECOND wave of tax cuts.

But while the economy did start growing, finally, in 2003, the growth wasn't at all of the form you'd expect if tax cuts were responsible. The main tax cuts were on dividends and capital gains; supposedly this would make it easier for businesses to raise funds and invest. But business investment hasn't been the main driver of growth; in fact, businesses have been sitting on huge piles of earnings, reluctant to invest. Instead, the big driver was housing construction and consumer spending.

So what really happened? Low interest rates led to a housing boom that eventually turned into a housing bubble. High house prices made people feel richer, and they could borrow against the increased value of their homes, feeding consumer spending. Tax cuts had nothing to do with it.

[John]

I don't agree. In any specialized field the lack of education is going to show. Yes, it would be nice if reporters were better educated in economics. So too in computer programming, in math, in physics, etc., etc.

Perhaps newspapers could hire PhDs in each specialized field covered by the news. That's an idea, but somehow it doesn't strike me as practical.

Rather, YOU (Brad) must do a better job, and be more persistent in getting economic news to the media.

Seriously, don't you think so?

John

[c]

The necessary "economics" can be learned by anyone willing to keep asking questions. The shocking news is that "36.2% of journalists with college degrees were journalism majors." If they learned a real subject, they might develop the habits of mind that would get them asking critical questions.

[Ari]

I agree with Jon. An intelligent journalist should be able to master writing in a field in which he/she was not a university specialist. When Paul Krugman writes on non-economic issues, the writing is often criticized by conservatives but I find the analysis excellent. Besides, conservatives criticize Krugman when the writing is on economics.

[Jim Dandy]

The key to good journalism is having a critical and analytical mind, not so much the actual formal training in a particular discipline. Some of the best graduate students I’ve ever taught in economics came into the graduate program with an undergraduate degree in philosophy where they were taught to think and ask probing questions.

I would discount heavily the value of a journalist with a PhD in economics who was trained only in the dogmas of current orthodoxy about markets and government intervention. While some economics training would seem necessary, it is not sufficient.

The public would be better informed by a journalist trained to think and ask probing questions who could canvass different views among practicing economists and provide a careful synthesis, in addition to conveying accurately the meaning of empirical data and statistical analysis.

[Arun Khanna]

Journalism schools could simply include senior year journalism courses that allow students to specialize in the area of their choice: business, international affairs, economics, arts and so on.
A NSF (or similar) grant should be awarded to interested journalism school faculty to propose some such plan.

[Chris]

I have a BA in econ from a second tier school, with honors, and I have a feeling I'd get nailed from Brad from time to time if I was a journalist. I think it takes an MA to know what you're talking about.

However, most econ writing is utter nonsense, and I'd be able to not write it in the first place. It's just that they're not much for me to say for sure, other than to debunk BS.

[wcw]

It may be a technical field, but even if I hadn't heard the old joke about economists ("all right, assume all odd numbers are prime.."), Mankiw himself would be an object lesson in why education and expertise alone hardly suffice as sufficient condition objectively to describe the issues.

This isn't a pot/kettle situation, though. Journalists who don't get it get fooled by people like Mankiw. They *do* get it, but their deepseated desires force them to seek (apologies to JKG) a superior justification for selfishness.

Bluntly, a whore like Mankiw who should know better is a hundred times worse than a malleable tool who doesn't.

[Arun Khanna]

You might want to consider a small experiment for a future journalism/economics class at Berkeley:
Select articles on economics from right leaning newspapers and left leaning newspapers. Take out the name of authors and newspaper. Mix the articles in an urn and distribute them to your class. Ask students to identify which newspaper each article is from.

[M.A.]

As a journalist, let me ask an economics question: Who would pay for all this extra learning?

Last year's average starting salary for a journalism graduate was just shy of $28,000 a year. The median journalist's income in the 2000 Census was $31,000. There are fewer reporting jobs today than there were five years ago, and most major media outlets have some form of cost-cutting underway, with labor costs on the top of the list. You don't find a lot of people with a spare economics degree sloshing around newsrooms because their talents are usually worth more somewhere else.

In good journalism programs, basic economics, math and statistics are part of the requrements, and like most college requirements, they are suffered through and quickly forgotten by most. Those that thrive around numbers can often find themselves in a far less-crowded part of the job market.

Mr. Mankiw's right in that econ journalists often have to learn on the fly. Where he's off-course is in thinking that learning on the fly is somehow exclusive to econ journalists. The difference between a real reporter and a clock-puncher rests on their ability to learn as they go. The way to encourage good reporting it is to praise what gets it right and critique what gets it wrong.

[A. Zarkov]

“Here's my radical suggestion to the editors of the world: Require all your economics reporters to have an undergraduate degree in economics.”

I think a graduate degree in economics might be more appropriate. Economics is one of those subjects, like statistics, that should be preceded by an undergraduate major in physics, chemistry or engineering (note that I left out mathematics). Those subjects deal with making models and analyzing data. They provide a better grounding in how the world really works. But how many reporters deal exclusively with economic news other than those that work for a few specialty newspapers?

[Saam Barrager]

I suppose rigorous training in rhetoric, or statistics, or economics would do it. An editor can scan through and wack confused examples of nominal vs. real, or income vs. capital gains vs. payroll taxes.

Any of those disciplines require the user to assess the validity of data, both for internal consistency and for relevance.

Though to be certain, seems like journalism would require that also.

[A. Zarkov]

“Select articles on economics from right leaning newspapers ...”

Please identify these right-leaning newspapers. I can only think of two. The Washington Times which had a small readership and the Wall Street Journal. The Journal pretty much keeps its right-leaning stuff to the editorial page. Indeed I understand the editorial part and news part of the Journal are virtually separate worlds.

[David W.]

We may not have very many journalists who are economically literate, but thankfully we do have economists who blog that sometimes even write well. Some are even professors! Imagine that...

[david]

I can't tell if the trade debate, say, would be dumber or smarter if we got more journalists with higher degrees in economics. I think your recent concern about the bull***t meter is a more pressing concern.

[wml]

I'm having a hard time thinking of what would be useful in economics to an economics journalist. I guess 101 micro and macro, and maybe a course in economic history? Half-assed econometrics is arguably worse than none at all... game theory would be useless...

This reminds of when ancient philosphers opine that the greatest way to happiness and fortune is by the study of... philosophy. Bit self-serving for economist to encourge more to study economics...

[piotr]

Someone observed that a graduate in economics can be a hack, as Dr. Mankiw himself exemplifies.

Yes, but he is numerate, logical and bright. Plus, rather dreadful commenting on economy happens when journalists have axe to grind.

Very recent example: Bolivia nationalized gas production. A standard article on the topic does not say a word about the basic thing: how much money is at stake, how much money Bolivian government gains immediately, how much Brazil and Argentina stand to loose, how the prices paid by Brasil and Argentina compare with prices in different regions etc. Instead there are some isolated mumbers, e.g. that Petrobras invested 1.5 billion so far (I think that part of that investment are pipelines in Brasil itself, but perhaps not).

Several places reported a very similar story that presumably reflect the kvetching of the affected companies (Brasilian and Spanish). Even such non-numerate detail was skipped: the reaction of Kirchner, president of Argentina, was strangely muted. The context that he defaulted on Argentinian agreements with creditor and negotiated much better terms is perhaps relevant: Kirchner is in "been there, done that" position.

The point is that journalists were content with parrotting some press releases without trying to make some sense.

[jonathan King]

M.A. writes:
>
> As a journalist, let me ask an economics question: Who
> would pay for all this extra learning?
>
> Last year's average starting salary for a journalism
> graduate was just shy of $28,000 a year. The median
> journalist's income in the 2000 Census was $31,000.

OK, so I brought this up in another thread on a similar subject earlier today. I think this the real problem. Indeed, I'm guessing the right kind of economist could model this situation: if an econ specialist can make $E per year on average, and there's even a modest correlation between the economist's knowledge or skill and earnings, AND people (especially econ majors) always take the larger of two salary offers, I'm sure you could show that there should be vanishingly few economists in entry level journalism jobs, and those few are rather likely to be inferior specimens.

Having said that, I'm also willing to bet that should a more gifted (but irrational) economist try to start a job in journalism, it wouldn't be that easy becasue (wait for it) he or she didn't have any real journalism experience. Sigh...

OK, so let me end on a happier note. I teach Cognitive Neuroscience to undergrads and grads here at MU, and over the past several years, I've seen an increasing number of J-school students take my course, and actually getting something out of it. Now, this won't make them experts, but they do pick up some subject matter background. More importantly, I make them read the primary literature. 10-20 papers isn't enough to be that meaningful, but I know that the power law of learning tells us that a journalist who has read even 10 journal articles in any natural science is probably much more likely to be able to make sense of some new flashy result that appears in (say) PNAS. They'd at least have some better instincts, and they might even take a crack at looking at the paper before they either retype the press release or ask softball questions of the authors and/or others in the field.

Well...at least that's my fond hope. :-)

[Lord]

Perhaps we could also educate economists better on the different value systems nad utility functions of people, a more comprehensive view of the externalities of economics, and how economics works within a political system. These seem to be great shortcomings of many of them.

[divF]

A. Zarkov writes:

"I think a graduate degree in economics might be more appropriate. Economics is one of those subjects, like statistics, that should be preceded by an undergraduate major in physics, chemistry or engineering (note that I left out mathematics). Those subjects deal with making models and analyzing data."

I would not be so quick to assume that physical sciences and engineering undergraduate degrees provide such skills any longer. One of the big complaints I hear from faculty in physics and engineering (this is at Berkeley) is that undergraduates no longer learn the fundamentals and the quantitative reasoning needed to provide imaginative solutions to new problems. Instead, learning is mostly formulae and taxonomy, with little deep understanding.

[Jack]

What differentiates the two exemplars of economics reporting from other publicaitons is their readership.

With the proper feedback a smart journalist will, regardless of background, get it right. Without is a much tougher test.

However as a possibly relevant anecdote, several FT journalists at least have post-graduate economics backgrounds and The Economist offers scholarships to some journalists. However there have been plenty of examples cited on thi very blog of career economists with doctorates talking rubbish (confusing real and nominal income growth for example) so I think the qualifications of those journalists are a response to demand for better economic reporting. Just educating writers will not make much difference if their incentives haven't changed.

[supersaurus]

it would be nice to have journalists who are better educated about economics issues, but the same applies to other fields. for example the pinheads who ask "how am I supposed to believe a poll that only quizzed 1049 people says anything meaningful about the population of voting age US citizens?" or all the "we need some good science about global warming" idiots would not be seriously presented by journalists if the journalists understood the topics better. the same goes for space-borne laser weapons, antimissile defences, artificial intelligence, various combinatorial optimization problems ("we just need a faster computer!") and a host of other issues.

rather than being an expert on everything maybe journalists could stand to unlearn some habits of the recent past, for example the notion that presenting just what both sides say ("evolution couldn't possibly work!") about a question with equal weight rather than presenting objective facts ("real wages have grown how much in the last 5 years?") along with the BS would be nice. it seems to me journalists once knew very well that the people they interviewed often lied, omitted, or distorted the events, whether intentionally or not, but now a lot of reporting seems more like transcription, and for that we don't need "reporters" at all.

[A. Zarkov]

divF:

That’s very disappointing to hear, and I believe it. However when I was undergraduate things were very different. A lot of the engineering and physics majors already had considerable skills from their hobbies like amateur radio. We could build every thing from scratch, from a pile of basic components. We could even build houses and do the electrical wiring. Our courses concentrated on the basics. So all the engineers got mechanics, thermodynamics and fluid mechanics in addition to the courses in their major area. It wasn’t that unusual to see engineers taking basic courses in atomic physics, even point set topology. Engineers studied linear algebra in their junior year. There was so much overlap among physics, engineering and chemistry programs you could hardly tell the difference. These people made great modelers and went on to graduate school in a variety of fields including economics, computer science, statistics etc.

Hearing what you say makes me feel old in some ways.

[Darren]

"the economics profession needs to simultaneously improve its own coherence even as it tries to improve the quality of journalism."

I couldn't agree more.

to the professor who said that some of his best econ graduate students were the philosophers, because they could ask the probing questions: I just finished a terminal MA in economics, and in the program I was in, I cannot imagine a skill that would be rewarded less than the ability to ask probing questions. The ability to quickly generate 30 pages of algebra? Very highly prized. (David Colandar interviewed a grad student who said the best thing I've ever heard about graduate economics: "what does it take to succeed in econ grad school? Good math skills and not too critical a mind.")

[Anon]

Mankiw's proposal is neither necessary nor sufficient.

What is necessary and sufficient is a desire, at the top level of the newspaper, to get the story right.

Let's suppose Fox News hires someone with a Master's degree in Economics. Economic news comes out, and presentation A is known to be factually correct to the journalist with a Master's, while presentation B is factually incorrect but favorable to Republicans. Which presentation do you think will air?

[cb]

The problem isn't that there aren't enough journalists with degrees in economics. The problem is that there are too many journalists with degrees in journalism.

The issues being described here about economics..have been discussed for decades when lamenting the [poor] quality of science/health writing. These problems emerged again in general lackluster early reporting about Iraq (this current situation should not be a surprise).

the solution to the problem with economics reporting isn't education in economics. The problem is critical thinking. I would like to see reporting from someone with an undergraduate degree in history from a good liberal arts school that taught critical thought effectively (I think Daniel Gross has a degree in history from Cornell)... and would have less faith in someone who got an undergrad econ degree cruising through a noname school and then bombed out of grad school, taking a booby prize MA in econ.

I think Greg Ip has an undergraduate degree in economics, but what is John Berry's educational background? Who are the best reporters and what is their educational backgrounds?

[George Colpitts]

I think the best catalyst would be to require high school students to take a one year micro/macro course based on any of the standard first year college text such as Krugman/Wells. These don't require calculus and are no harder than any good high school physics text. Granted this isn't enough for a journalist writing economic stories but it would raise the level of discourse so that those journalists who have no understanding of economics would wither away.

I admire and agree with Levitt's blurb for "The Undercover Economist": "...this book should be required reading for every ... university student" but why not "every high school student" ? To suggest that a high school student would get nothing from books like this is very short-sighted. While some snobs might skip the book since a high school student could read it that would be their loss and a good trade-off if we got more high school students reading books like this. They would be better citizens and as an added bonus more of them would study economics in university

[Blissex]

This sounds like a call for more business for departments of economics.

The problem is not that journalist know too little economics, it is that they don't have the time and the will to delve in the issues.

Also, journalists are not expected to provide a critique of what they report; it would be good enough if they reported things a bit better, but hey journalists belong to factory style organisations that demand quantity more than quality. Filling pages is the number one driver.

As to degree in economics, the sort of neoclassical drivel taught in almost all courses is beneath contempt, as another commentator pointed out. As to a similar comment:

«Instead, learning is mostly formulae and taxonomy, with little deep understanding.»

in an era of mass education employers want docile tools who are not used to understanding, a dangerous thing. What is wanted is rote repetition, so jobs become deskilled and workers easily replaced.

Once upon a time only very few, the privileged, went to university, and universities provide an education suitable for an elite of future leaders.

Nowadays 40-50% of the population goes to some kind of university, and most universities are just degree certificate factories, drone training camps.

Most degrees this day certify that the holder was able to sit down for 3-4 years quietly lapping up and memorizing whatever would get him a small career advantage without raising any fuss, and thus is perfectly suitable for a cubicle farm.

Even more so for a degree in economics, where the obvious ridiculousness and contradictions and fantastic nature of most of the what is being taught seems designed to test and train the students for cynical opportunism.

[anon]

see the spike in initial jobless claims recently

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/current.htm

Where is there analysis in the media on this?

Currently: inflation is up, and unemployment may be on an upswing. In the 1990s, inflation was low and so too was unemployment?

What about a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment? How is the U.S. changing? Why?

[John Emerson]

What Andres said. Many of the rightwing ideologues I have met had econ degrees, and accepted the econ they were taught as gospel. Producing freemarket ideologues is one of the main functions of the economics profession today, and economists should be ashamed of themselves.

In internet debates defenders of the profession have tactfully explained to me that the deficiencies of neoclassical and marginalist econ are unimportant, since these are not dominant in the best schools, but by definition most econ BS's and MS's come from the lesser schools. The social impact of econ is probably negative, though it is probably true that economically-literate wingers are measurably less insane than the cornucopian fantasists and Armageddon Christians.

And of course, firing Donald Graham and Arthur O Sulzberger JR would do more than anything else to improve economics reporting. Who are their bosses, anyway?

[bakho]

Seems like there is opportunity for a one week short course.

[Darren]

Blissex: "Even more so for a degree in economics, where the obvious ridiculousness and contradictions and fantastic nature of most of what is being taught seems designed to test and train the students for cynical opportunism."

That nailed it.

John, I'm not sure that the neoclassical paradigm is dead or even resting at "the best schools". Granted, my sample size is one school, but my terminal MA (ie not a 'booby prize') was from a place which called itself (and was called by some others) the best econ school in Canada, and it was neoclassical all the way. It was a very powerful lesson: brand name != quality

[anne]

Greg Mankiw who is certainly an economist repeatedly disagrees profoundly with Paul Krugman who is also certainly an economist. Actually I would be much disturbed were Krugman to agree with Mankiw because the conservative philosophical base for Mankiw's economics almost always strikes me as leading to outcomes that are inequitable. It is not that economics is a wholly deductive science, but a social study in which differing philosophical starting points give novel answers to problems. There is no reason why inquiring generally well educated writers cannot write well on economics. What Mankiw really wants though are reports that are in line with conservative economics.

[anne]

For Joseph Stiglitz in looking at the American economy there is a war and occupation that are of profound limiting significance. For Mankiw war and occupation do not seem to exist. Different economics?

[liberal]

Not clear to me that economists understand economics.

Many economists appear not to understand that land is not capital, don't really understand the economics of land rent, etc.

[liberal]

A. Zarkov wrote, "Economics is one of those subjects, like statistics, that should be preceded by an undergraduate major in physics, chemistry or engineering (__note that I left out mathematics__). Those subjects deal with making models and analyzing data. They provide a better grounding in how the world really works." [emphasis added]

Problem is that a lot of economics appears fairly unconcerned with the real world and, while claiming an intellectual descent from physics, is really more akin to mathematics.

See e.g.
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pkt/1998m11-d/msg00019.htm

[liberal]

John Emerson wrote, "Producing freemarket ideologues is one of the main functions of the economics profession today, and economists should be ashamed of themselves."

But, ironically, this actually supports one of the tenets of free-market economics: namely, that incentives matter. For the rewards of repeating orthodoxy are there.

[bncthor]

Fewer and fewer people obtain their news from print journalists. As pointed out in previous posts, and demonstrated everday in our newspapers and magazines, far to many print journalists, like most Americans are economically illiterate. And, that is bad. But, since it is broadcast journalists from which most of us obtain our news and views of what is happening 24/7 around the world, it is by broadcast journalists having a better understanding of economics that the average American would come to have a better understanding of critical economic principles. It will be impossible for our country to have rational and effective economic policies promulgated at the federal, state, and local level until the average voter has at least a basic economic education. And, that is not going to happen in the near future.

[liberal]

A. Zarkov wrote, "It wasn’t that unusual to see engineers taking basic courses in atomic physics, even point set topology."

Hmm...this bit about point set topology seems a bit out of place in the context of your longer rant...

[andres]

Hmm. I should add more context to this discussion by pointing out that Mankiw is not in the right wing, but in the center of the economics profession's political spectrum. He did, after all, co-edit the volume on New Keynesian Economics which was an indirect challenge to both Chicago monetarism and the New Classical school. So if the economist that so many of the commenters here are calling a hack is (or maybe was) on the profession's moderate center of gravity, then that is only an indication of how screwed up the profession is.

I used to joke that a libertarian is someone who fancies himself an expert economist because he's read the first four chapters of a microeconomics textbook and skipped the rest. Too many PhD. economists today talk as if they're libertarians in that sense, though thankfully not DeLong, Krugman, Stiglitz, and many others. Still, given that so much of the profession is suspect, I'm highly skeptical of the proposition that it should prosletyse more frequently among journalists.

[anne]

Greg Mankiw is a terrific economist as is Paul Krugman. The difference is in the assumption base each uses for a chain of logic in looking to outcomes. Again, we are not considering physics deductions where base assumptions are agreed on. We have a social study, a study of political-economy as John Kenneth Galbraith would have it. We do not have another physical science, for all the mathematical deduction.

[anne]

Heck, if you wish to find how curious an economic philsoophy can be and spin off all sorts of strange deductive chains, look to the Austrians who make all sorts of sense until you realize how nutty the assumptions really are :) Oh dear, oh dear.

[Dustin]

"Too many PhD. economists today talk as if they're libertarians in that sense, though thankfully not DeLong,"

Does a Ph.D in Econimics require more or less than a reading of the first few chapters of a Microeconomics textbook?

[Dustin]

"Not clear to me that economists understand economics."

Who would you say understands economics more than economists?

[A. Zarkov]

“Hmm...this bit about point set topology seems a bit out of place in the context of your longer rant...”

It is. I did shift gears there. The point being at one time engineers and physicists took basic courses, and didn’t just memorize formulas. However, while technically educated people (including economists) learn to think critically about the natural world, they don’t usually think critically about people. In a word, tech people are gullible. Professional magicians like Houdini and Randy are much better at debunking charlatans. Right after a term of scientists were ready to certify a spiritual medium as genuine, Houdini showed them how she tricked them. Uri Geller fooled a lot of scientists until debunked by Randy and Diaconis (mathematician and former magician). SRI wasted the taxpayer’s money on experiments in remote viewing. I attended an IEEE conference session where remote communications with submarines via ESP was presented uncritically—they even calculated the channel capacity!
I think journalists need a much better critical sense of the real world and they are not going to get that from majoring in economics or engineering. Statistics might be a little better. Statisticians are trained to suspect data. In general they are a harder class of people to fool.

[John Emerson]

Dustin, economics may not be very well understood. Alternatively, economics plus something else might provide the best understanding of economics.

[liberal]

andres wrote, "I should add more context to this discussion by pointing out that Mankiw is not in the right wing, but in the center of the economics profession's political spectrum. He did, after all, co-edit the volume on New Keynesian Economics which was an indirect challenge to both Chicago monetarism and the New Classical school. So if the economist that so many of the commenters here are calling a hack is (or maybe was) on the profession's moderate center of gravity, then that is only an indication of how screwed up the profession is."

I don't think that follows.

I'd be the first to agree that, in economics, normative stances too often influence descriptive/positive positions.

But in principle it's certainly possible that someone could take a positive position that is "centrist" and yet in normative stance be a right-wing hack.

New-Keynesian Mankiw is a good example of this, I'd claim.

[liberal]

Dustin wrote, "Who would you say understands economics more than economists?"

_Some_ economists understand economics quite well.

However, many economists have, for example, apparently bought the neoclassical obfuscation of land and capital hook, line, and sinker.

See e.g.
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/angrybear/113434142183233758/#338143

(As usual, the whole link is there. The stylesheet for this page just makes it appear truncated. But copy/paste will still work.)

[liberal]

A. Zarkov wrote, "Statistics might be a little better. Statisticians are trained to suspect data. In general they are a harder class of people to fool."

That's certainly true.

Unfortunately, I see investigators in many disciplines disregard some important principles of statistical analysis. (E.g. the multiple comparison problem.)

[giulio]

Strictly speaking, an economics major (or better master) is neither necessary and sufficient to report coherently on economic issues. As a first approximation, though, I think it is (they are) closer to necessary than sufficient...

[giulio]

that is "neither necessary NOR sufficient"

[Blissex]

On the contents and purpose of an economics degree:

«and it was neoclassical all the way. It was a very powerful lesson: brand name != quality.»

Unfortunately you completely misunderstand what the purpose of an economics degree is, and what economists are meant to do.

The purpose of an economics degree is to get you a well paid job, and economists are meant to be well paid *advocates* for corporate advantage.

An economist is supposed to argue that there is no such thing as a monopoly, that unions can only depress wages, that a minimum wage can only reduce unemployment, that increases in wealth and income for the richest always trickle down, ...

The overwhelming math content of economics since the Chicago school became dominant is there to lend both respectability and impenenetrability to very deeply flawed assumptions and arguments. Advanced mathematics is the Church Latin of economics.

As to tenured academic economists, many of them, especially those with some claim to fame and authority, derive much more money from expert witness services on behalf of corporations, and from consultancy to corporate lobbying organisations, than the already significant and secure salary they get.

Also, departments of economics don't get chairs endowed by founders and CEO of major corporations if they stray from the true faith...

Those who pay for the music choose the tune.

Departments of economics that are «neoclassical all the way» are very high quality, because that's what the sponsors want to hear, and that's what you should be trained in if you want to be a well paid corporate advocate.

[Blissex]

On the contents and purpose of an economics degree:

«and it was neoclassical all the way. It was a very powerful lesson: brand name != quality.»

Unfortunately you completely misunderstand what the purpose of an economics degree is, and what economists are meant to do.

The purpose of an economics degree is to get you a well paid job, and economists are meant to be well paid *advocates* for corporate advantage.

An economist is supposed to argue that there is no such thing as a monopoly, that unions can only depress wages, that a minimum wage can only reduce unemployment, that increases in wealth and income for the richest always trickle down, ...

The overwhelming math content of economics since the Chicago school became dominant is there to lend both respectability and impenenetrability to very deeply flawed assumptions and arguments. Advanced mathematics is the Church Latin of economics.

As to tenured academic economists, many of them, especially those with some claim to fame and authority, derive much more money from expert witness services on behalf of corporations, and from consultancy to corporate lobbying organisations, than the already significant and secure salary they get.

Also, departments of economics don't get chairs endowed by founders and CEO of major corporations if they stray from the true faith...

Those who pay for the music choose the tune.

Departments of economics that are «neoclassical all the way» are very high quality, because that's what the sponsors want to hear, and that's what you should be trained in if you want to be a well paid corporate advocate.

[Darren]

Blissex: Unfortunately, I went back to school to study economics because I was interested in understanding how the world worked (I was even thinking about academia)... I left feeling angry and ripped-off. Economics has no shortage of critics (Blaug, McCloskey, Meyer, the whole post-autistic movement, etc) who ask "how did economics get so screwed up, and why does it stay screwed up?" Your cynical view rings true to me now, sadly: economics stays screwed up, partly due to inertia of course (math drones begat more math drones, the realists leave the profession), but also because the powers that be *want* it to stay screwed up.

[Blissex]

«Unfortunately, I went back to school to study economics because I was interested in understanding how the world worked (I was even thinking about academia)... I left feeling angry and ripped-off.»

If you had staid you could have become a very highly paid consultant and expert witness advocate for corporations, but then it looks like you had a genuine interest in the subject.

«Economics has no shortage of critics»

My own favourite is the fairly brief and devastating exposition in Steve Keen's "Debunking Economics" which is also a nice tutorial on textbook level economics.

I like the importance he gives to Sraffa's work and the Cambridge controversy... Even if I think he should have given almost equivalent prominence to the second-best theorem, which is the other great destroyer of canonical academic economics.

«(math drones begat more math drones, the realists leave the profession),»

Yes, sounds like it. But you could have chosen economic history or a different country where economics is not just math-disguised advocacy.

I just dearly hope that marvelous ''political economy'' books like "The wealth and poverty of nations" will bring more people into economics degrees (I am not an academic, so this is not self serving), or at least economic history ones, and that these people will be less willing to become well paid apologists...

Just found this fairly well argued page:

http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/StudentEssays/Clausen1.htm
"Post-Autistic Praxis"