It's a mug's game for the defenders of "orthodox" (aside: The terms "orthodox" and "heterodox" conceal more than they reveal in this discussion. Nobody agrees on what constitutes "orthodox economics and "heterodox" economics includes such a wide variety of approaches and quality that saying anything ill or good about it in general is invalid.) economics too. "Orthodox" economist reject "heterodox" conclusions because they think they're wrong and have what they believe to be good arguments against them, yet any rejection of "heterodox" economics that doesn't include a detailed demonstration of why they reject the specific claim is going to be written off as more "orthodox" bullying.

Any serious discussion of these matters is going to have to delve into the technical side of things, which this isn't a good forum for. Instead, we'll get the spectacle grown men with bruised egos yelling "ya-huh" and "na-huh" at each other ad nauseam.

Posted at May 30, 2007 8:22 AM in response to A (Strong) Response to Tyler Cowen

In many cases the most influential people are those at think tanks sponsored by right wing donors (the Hoover Institution or Cato, for example). These organization hire "scholars" with varying amounts of credentials, but their most important qualification is that they can turn out white papers which agree with the social policy position of the organization. These (un-referreed) white papers are then cited as if they were serious research and used by politicians as "proof" that their policies will provide the goals desired.

How is this different from their critics? EPI's output likewise hews to a predictable pro-gov't intervention line and is touted by politicians who share its ideological predisposition. The influence of these think tanks stems, like their progressive peers, stems from sympathetic politicians getting elected. The existence of diametrically opposed views isn't suprising; it's inevitable since it is the political controversy that calls into existence the ideological think tank, not the other way around.

Posted at May 29, 2007 4:21 PM in response to "Hip Heterodoxy" and the History of Economics

I think Kerry picked a good ideological position to stake out for a Democratic candidate in the 2004 race - I can't see a substantial shift either right or left having done anything but hurt his prospects. Even on the war, taking a slightly more hawkish stance would probably have been just as good as long as he had been consistent with it. The real problem was that Bush's campaign managed to focus the debate about the war on Kerry's inconsistency rather than Bush's incompetence.

Posted at August 2, 2006 3:47 PM in response to Too Conservative?

Re 2)

As much as I'm willing to subsize any other school of same general quality outside of matters of religious doctrine (there needs to be some standards to ensure the money is actually going to education), but there is no way I'd send my kids to one.

Whatever damage a Scientologist/Wiccan/creationist/etc school can do to a kids attachment to reality is probably overshadowed by the the damage already being done by the Scientologist/Wiccan/creationist/etc parent. When the parent is preaching a different message than the biology teacher is teaching, the parent is almost always going to end up winning because the issues that conflict with the doctrine are only briefly covered while the parents abundant time over the child's life to drive their points home, so public education will only have a marginal impact on children whose parents hold these views.

Posted at August 2, 2006 2:39 PM in response to Whose Freedom

Deleted because of double post

Posted at August 2, 2006 2:07 PM in response to Whose Freedom

The assumption that public schools provide a good education on controversial topics (in the sense that it generates controversy for the school, not necessarily that there is any serious intellectual controversy about it). While creationists haven't been successful in getting their views taught in science classes, they have frequently been succesful in reducing or eliminating the coverage of evolution in public schools because the administrators don't want to deal with small but vocal groups of parents making problems for them in local politics.

Putting aside the private school availablilty issue (relevant, but a different argument), I'd send my kids to schools where evolution and sex ed (that other social conservative educational bete noir) were presented accurately. So the potential exists for an increase in the quality of education on these issues for parents who do what their kids learning about them. Kids whose parents would send them to schools teaching creationism are probably already having whatever the public schools offer up on evolution overshadowed by support for creationism from their parents and religious indoctrination, so teaching them evolution at school is unlikely to actually result in them having a correct understanding of it.

It's also worth noting that not all religous schools would teach creationism. The Catholic church, for example, accepts evolution and I expect that they'd present it accurately in their courses.

Posted at August 2, 2006 1:58 PM in response to Whose Freedom

Can you point me to someone making an detailed economic argument that minimum wages stimulate growth? The two main camps on mimimum wage policy I'm familiar with are those arguing that it suppresses employment in low-wage sectors and those arguing that it doesn't suppress employment (the Card and Kruger study typically gets enlisted to support this view). I don't think I've ever heard of any causitive realtionship between minimum wages and growth.

BTW, the free market position is pretty much what you described; it holds that both minimum wage laws and corporate welfare detract from economic growth.

Posted at May 18, 2006 1:11 PM in response to Won't Do

It's consistent, if you recognize that "we'll know in X months" is pundit-speak for "I have no effin' idea and I'm not even going to try to guess."

Posted at May 17, 2006 1:34 PM in response to The Eternal Recurrence of Tom Friedman

I think the major factor is that the conclusion that cutting taxes will increase revenue is too politically convienient to pass by as long as modicum of intellectual cover can be provided by the misapplication of the Laffer curve. They know full-well that they're going to just end up borrowing the difference, but it's politically difficult to cut spending in order to sustain the reduced tax rates, so they pretend they don't need to.

Posted at May 15, 2006 5:43 PM in response to Ignorance is Bliss

So how do you propose we predict the consequences of policy changes on unemployment, interest rates, wages, etc? Do you simply follow your intuition and assume that it is correct?

Posted at May 11, 2006 3:53 PM in response to Goo-goos vs. boo-goos