Reading the news, one could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that virtually all economists work for the government or the Fed, and that few of them have real (i.e., private sector) jobs. Of course, there are many practitioners of microeconomics who do an enormous amount of good in society for private clients. Austrian economists have long focused on microeconomics because only microeconomics focuses on the only unit that matters in economic action: the individual. The amount of sound, practical microeconomic wisdom found in Mises’s Bureaucracy, for example, is impressive.
In this article in the Wall Street Journal, Amity Shlaes examines the role of economists in the private sector, and the good many of them do. Macroeconomists, on the other hand, are another story. The macroeconomists, Shlaes notes, are guilty of “guildthink.” That is, macroeconomists in Washington exist in a closed system of like-thinking ideologues who shut out dissenting opinion:
When it comes to Washington policy, macroeconomists shut out innovative colleagues, some even of the sort Mr. Litan celebrates. The ruling macro-theorists, for instance, demonstrate an annihilating contempt for the Austrian School, which focuses more on individuals than aggregates. The same contempt is directed at Public Choice Theory, which predicts that governments will take advantage of market crises to expand in nonmarket sectors. Scholars from these schools do not win top positions at the Fed or at major universities and firms.
Such guildthink is what proved fatal just before 2008 and after. There were no Public Choice School theorists at the White House or powerful institutions to warn that there might be a housing bubble if government expanded its presence in the housing sector. Few elite economists warned that the administration might use a financial crisis to undermine bankruptcy precedent or socialize health care. Ironically, analysis by economists demonstrates the inefficiency of guilds, yet these scholars perpetuate their own. Until that changes, go ahead and blame the economists.
