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A clever test of ideological bias among economists.
@JavdaniMohsen and Ha-Joon Chang ask economists whether they agree or not with quotes (mis-)attributed to more or less mainstream or heterodox figures.
Blog: ineteconomics.org/perspectives/b…
Paper: researchgate.net/publication/33…
@JavdaniMohsen and Ha-Joon Chang ask economists whether they agree or not with quotes (mis-)attributed to more or less mainstream or heterodox figures.
Blog: ineteconomics.org/perspectives/b…
Paper: researchgate.net/publication/33…
@JavdaniMohsen If I read correctly... economists are less likely to agree with Adam Smith if his words are attributed to Marx. (No surprise.)
@JavdaniMohsen We're more likely to agree with a statement by Keynes if it’s attributed to Kenneth Arrow. (Yikes!)
And we have a really strong urge to agree with Coase, which disappears when his statements were unattributed or attributed to someone else. (Hmmm...)
Ideological bias is not evenly distributed: stronger on the right, among men, and macroeconomists.
Leading to this fun argument: "The way to fix bias in economics is to recruit more women"
ft.com/content/5b9b47…
ft.com/content/5b9b47…
As an aside, I should note that #econtwitter has complained a bit about the use of deception in this study. The authors do address it. Decide for yourself, but IMO seems far less problematic than, say, the Hong Kong protest experiment that has also been hotly debated on here.
Couple of follow ups. First, several people have mentioned this concern, and the unpredictable effects it might have had on the results:
Scott launched an interesting thread on how/when experimental economics can avoid deception:
But this is definitely my favorite reaction so far. Hope the NSF funds this immediately.
