Previous research indicates that the more years of education a person has, the more he thinks like an economist. A new paper (summarized by the BPS Research Digest) by Bryan Caplan and Stephen C. Miller, however, attempts to separate the role of intelligence and education in “thinking like an economist.” Caplan and Miller found that “the estimated effect of education sharply falls after controlling for intelligence. In fact, education is driven down to second place, and intelligence replaces it at the top of the list of variables that make people ‘think like economists.’ Thus, to a fair degree education is proxy for intelligence, though there are some areas – international economics in particular -where education still dominates.” [%comments]
Thinking Like an Economist
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This isn’t too surprising since Economists tend to consider virtually any rational decision making “thinking like an economist”
To really see if someone is “thinking like an economist” you’d have to look at those areas where simple rational analysis and economic analysis do not overlap.
For example, completely ignoring actual experience in the face of a simple model that seems to contradict it. Only economists and politicians tend to do that.
Sounds like these people are thinking a lot like the economists who believed markets couldn’t have bubbles, couldn’t crash, always get prices right, didn’t need regulation to avoid meltdowns. Oh, maybe the same economists who believe that people are always rational in decisions, have unlimited willpower, never help others and should believe in the tooth fairy!
Easy bet for Ig-Nobel of Economics 2011.
Caplan and Miller are themselves economists, right? Because I imagine that a group of sociologists, for example, would have arrived at quite a different conclusion.
Next month, an anthropological case study will reveal that generous, kind individuals think like anthropologists. Political scientists will retort that their faculty Christmas parties are objectively the funnest of all… and so forth.
What was in third and fourth place?
I wonder if in the past smarter people tended to think differently. Like say, maybe in the past the smartest people tended the think like a philosopher, or maybe after the scientific revolution the smartest people tended the think like scientists.
Nowadays, economics is a rather selective field that attracts bright minds (I’m stuck with being a philosopher). Thus, economists as a group, are just a whole bunch of smart people. So, maybe the study is just showing that smart people tend to think like other smart people.
Re #2: “…trying to show that politically conservative people can be intelligent without being educated.”
Well, that puts them one up on the politically liberal, who all too often manage neither
This week in Australia a new TV show started; RAKE. The first show featured Cleaver Greene (a Barrister) defending a world renowned economist, Graham Murray, on a charge of cannabalism.
Murray, utters the classic line when in the witness box,
“I’m not a murderer, I’m an economist!”