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For generations people have hated economists, who seem to smile when delivering the bad news that there's no such thing as a free lunch. If you increase the minimum wage by X percent, they warn, Y percent of teen workers will lose their jobs. If you expand government subsidies to families without health insurance, like Scrooge they caution that millions will stop buying health insurance on their own and let taxpayers pick up the tab. If you cut interest rates to spur investment, you're liable to unleash the beast of inflation, they admonish.
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At the same time many people stand in awe of economists. If a slew of economists sign a petition saying that some public policy will have a host of dire side effects, the media and even politicians are likely to pay attention. If sociologists, anthropologists or even psychologists were to do the same, it's possible that no one would take note. (The U.S. President has a Council of Economic Advisors but not a Council of Sociological Advisors.) If a survey says four out of five economists recommend a policy, it's almost like hearing that four out of five dentists recommend sugarless gum to their patients who chew gum.
Why do people pay attention to economists so much? Perhaps it's because economists deal with big, important things that people really care about—money, for instance—or because economists seem so analytical, unswayed by passion, letting empirical evidence and formal models answer questions for them. Rather than relying on gut feelings or using a lot of fuzzy adjectives, they tend to give precise magnitudes when they offer advice—and their tools seem to be pretty good at plausibly isolating cause and effect. Perhaps people pay attention simply because most economists are extremely smart. To receive a Ph.D. in economics you've got to earn a stratospherically high score on your gres, learn a lot of advanced math and statistics, and endure a gauntlet of grueling graduate courses. The hurdles to entering the profession are plainly daunting, and only obviously intelligent people with an immense amount of sheer mental stamina can clear them.
In The Making of an Economist, Redux, David Colander of Middlebury College takes a close look at how the nation's top economics graduate programs turn a select group of bright students into the analytical economists that society has come to hate, yet revere. The results will be of special interest to undergraduate students who are contemplating graduate work in economics. In fact, the book updates an earlier (1990) work that became must reading for those considering taking the plunge. But the volume also provides fascinating fare for the general reader. Colander proceeds by analyzing a survey administered to graduate students at seven top schools—Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale—comparing these results to an earlier survey and then sitting down with small groups of students to probe their experiences, attitudes, and observations in greater detail. The closing reflections include blunt observations on the process and profession by Colander; the widely respected macro-economist Robert Solow, a Nobel Laureate; and Arjo Klamer, a disgruntled "heterodox" critic of mainstream economics.
The first finding that may surprise many outsiders is that economists are not politically conservative—although they are far more conservative than other academic social scientists. Other social sciences implicitly (and in some cases explicitly) ban political conservatives from their ranks. If you admit to being a conservative or show the telltale signs, you will be actively dissuaded from entering these professions at many key steps, and your odds of getting an academic job will be slim. Economists don't engage in this form of abuse. Rather, as Colander puts it, the field's uncivil behavior is "mathematical hazing": setting needlessly high mathematical standards, lauding them, and using them to show off and to keep out less analytical thinkers. This hazing apparently favors neither political party, so graduate economics programs attract a spectrum of intellectuals, although they actually tilt to the left. Among the students surveyed by Colander, 48 percent consider themselves to be liberal, 24 percent moderate and 16 percent conservative. (Surveys of the political affiliations of professional economists show a similar range.) Colander finds that these students become more conservative as they progress through their graduate economics training—and are more politically conservative than their cohorts from two decades ago, who included a noticeable contingent of self-identified radicals.
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