Re: Only Economists Tell the Truth?

[Fred Foldvary]

--- Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Social science 
 would be vastly easier than economists make it out to be if we could 
 usually just ask people why they do things.  But economists are generally 
 skeptical of this approach,

Social science does have a great advantage over biological-behavior science
in that we can ask our subjects of study what they are thinking and feeling. 
This makes up for not being able to do as extensive experiments on them as do
those who study animals and plants.  More of this should be done, taking into
account the fact that of course people lie to pollsters and also, many folks
don't really know why they do many things, at least beneath the superficial
reasons.  Economists can also figure much behavior out from common
observation and introspection.

But perhaps a major reason why we don't rely so much on asking, is that
economics is more concerned with the means towards goals than on why folks
have the goals that they do.  We presume the means involve economizing, and
then there is really no need to inquire personally beyond that; Max(U) given
constraints C does the job, perhaps too abstractly.

Fred Foldvary


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median voter theorem and polarization

[debacker]

I am not too familiar with the MVT and would like to know more.

From what I gather, this theorem says that the political parties should 
both move towards the center of the liberal/conservative dichotomy.  
Seems logical enough.  Is this right?

If so, then what explains the polarization that this article is talking 
about: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2060047?  I found the 2D model of the 
house and senate especially interesting and was very surprised at the 
white space in between the two parties.

Jason

Re: Only Economists Tell the Truth?

[Rodney F Weiher]

Armchairers,

You might want to check out the extensive literature on so-called direct
techniques such as contingent valuation and conjoint analysis that is used
in environmental economics to elicit quantitative estimates of
willingness-to-pay for non-market, non-use goods.  Quantitative results are
generally comparable (although higher) than those obtained from indirect
methods such as travel cost models and they are now accepted in courts of
law.

They did, however, get a bad name in the Exxon Valdeze case, where the
products of sleepy academics suddenly took on enormous importance in terms
of dollars changing hands.

Even Solow and Arrow and Paul Portney at RFF have looked at this subject and
said the WTP (or Willingness-to-accept) estimates pass muster with the
academic community, if the estimates are cut in half.

Rodney Weiher
NOAA Chief Economist

Alex Tabarrok wrote:

  Here is another reason, that just occured to me, why survey
 questions may not help us as much as we would like even on those
 questions where they are relevant.  In economics we are typically
 interested in what matters at the margin and this may be difficult to
 discover in a survey question.
 Take Robin's question about why people go to school.  The answer
 could truthfully be because my friends are going/because my father said
 I should etc. while at the same time it could be also be true that an
 increase in the wage rate reduces the number of people going to school.
 It seems to me that this may be difficult to pick up in survey questions
 though I suppose we could ask questions like - What factors would raise
 the probability that you would attend/not attend school?  - this sort of
 counter-factual, however, is a more difficult question to answer than
 the factual about why you did what you did but the answer to the latter
 question is an average while we are interested in the marginal.

 Alex

 P.S.  Yes, economists are inconsistent.

 --
 Dr. Alexander Tabarrok
 Vice President and Director of Research
 The Independent Institute
 100 Swan Way
 Oakland, CA, 94621-1428
 Tel. 510-632-1366, FAX: 510-568-6040
 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]