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For non-economists, the seemingly monolithic consensus of economists’ opinion may be disconcerting. Certainly many partisans have convinced themselves that economists are resolutely biased against whatever party it is they happen to support. This impression is wrong in two ways.



Many partisans have convinced themselves economists are biased against certain parties

Firstly, the consensus of expert opinion isn’t about the answer to a question so much as it is a consensus on the analytical tools used to address it. The basic starting points of any economic analysis are usually principles such as “people respond to incentives” (or, more trenchantly, “people aren’t stupid”) and “things add up” (that is, there are feedback effects). There are many ways to construct models based on these principles, but when the data are sufficiently informative, a consensus on methodology will turn into a consensus on conclusions. Economists are famously disputative about policy issues when the data are fragmentary or non-existent.

More importantly, the partisan leanings of academic economists span a broad spectrum, and include a diversity that may surprise some people. If economists have a reputation as being irredeemably right-wing among our colleagues in the humanities and in the other social sciences, the explanation is simply that conservative — and Conservative — economics professors are represented in the academy in a proportion not entirely dissimilar to that of the population as a whole.

Not all of us hold right-wing views: survey data suggest that the median economics professor in the United States is a moderate Democrat. The main difference between the views of economists and those of the rest of the population is that economists are more sanguine about — if not supportive of — markets. (It should be pointed out that reliable information about academic economists’ political leanings can only be obtained by asking them directly; they can almost never be inferred from their research.)