Justin Wolfers writes (not Justin Fox, as I mis-typed earlier) that at the recent American Economics Association meetings,
Over three days of intense discussions, I didn’t encounter a single economist who expressed optimism that Mr. Trump’s administration would be good for the economy. The optimists were those who thought Mr. Trump would not have the energy to actually implement his agenda; the pessimists’ thoughts veered toward disaster.
Pointer from Mark Thoma.
It is possible that they are correct. However, I doubt it. While I disagree with Mr. Trump on immigration and trade, and I condemn his interventions with individual business decisions, I think that these will cause relatively little harm. This harm could be more than offset by reining in regulations, replacing Obamacare, and/or tax reform.
What is true is that Mr. Trump and the professoriate have an adversarial relationship. Mr. Obama takes his world view from the faculty lounge of the sociology department, and he very much respected academic credentials. Mr. Trump is the opposite.
I think that credentialed economists deserve a bit more respect than what we receive from Mr. Trump, but much less than what many American Economics Association members seem to think we are entitled to. I think that Justin Wolfers’ colleagues are fantasizing about a scenario in which Mr. Trump causes an economic disaster so that the status of academic economists shoots up. But I do not think see this as a very likely scenario.
On the generic topic of academic expertise in government, Tyler Cowen writes,
when it comes to the nuts and bolts of governance, typically I would prefer to be ruled by the Harvard faculty, even recognizing the biases of experts. They understand the importance of applying expertise to complex problems, and they realize many issues do not respond well to common-sense fixes. The citizenry usually cannot make good decisions, or for that matter expert appointments, when technocracy is required.
I tend to focus on what I call the knowledge-power discrepancy. Joe Citizen may have less knowledge than Professor Jones, but Professor Jones could be more dangerous. That is because Professor Jones may over-estimate his suitability for telling other people what to do.
Compared with academics, business executives and military leaders have more experience with the challenge of implementing ideas. A good business executive would not take it for granted that a web site is going to work. A good general would emphasize all of the difficulties and risks of trying to shape the Middle East.