Finally, someone said it!!
Wednesday, 3 October 2007 by Joscelynn TomawI’ve been afraid that the recent glut of pop economics books and blogs is leading to a misunderstanding of what it means for a person to call himself an economist. I must make it clear that I do not consider myself an economist either, but having sat through a whole lot of hours of economics classes, I at least have an inkling that becoming one involves just a smidge of high level math and a whole lot of graphing and is not so much a bunch of libertarians sitting in a room high fiving eachother, chanting “Markets clear!!” In fact, I thought Bryan Caplan made an excellent point in The Myth of the Rational Voter that economists are most rewarded for finding flaws in traditional thinking and market failures.
I think it’s great that we’re coming to an understanding of the implications of econoimics for other disciplines, but there are, in fact, limits as to what is properly economics and it includes more than simple price theory. So while I haven’t quite felt qualified to make a categorization as to who is and is not an economist, Free Exchange puts forth its definition, albeit speaking of the term economist more as a professional designation.
If you disagree, go ahead and call me sour grapes about the dilution of my undergraduate degree.
Posted in Uncategorized
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.