Room with a view

ECONOMISTS love to argue. Indeed, since the crisis, it has often seemed they cannot agree on anything, and especially not on important matters like how best to boost a sickly economy or when to trim government borrowing. “Schlock economics” was the judgment bestowed by Robert Lucas, a Nobel prizewinner, on the stimulus proposals of Christina Romer, then Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser. Another Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman, labelled a rival view of business cycles “Phlogiston economics”, a reference to a debunked 17th-century theory of chemistry. More soft-spoken economists worry the bickering may carry a reputational cost: the public may simply conclude that solid, fact-based conclusions are beyond economists’ reach.

Such concerns were discussed (politely) at the latest annual meetings of the American Economic Association. Dismal scientists throng together each year (this time in not-so-dismal San Diego) to gossip, test the job market and hear presentations on hundreds of new academic papers. Among them were a handful focused on economists’ image problems. They suggest that economists, in fact, agree on quite a lot but that the public is resolutely unimpressed when they do.