If Only Economists Were So Powerful

Eminent economist David Romer has assumed the role of professional scold. A few years ago he excoriated other eminent economists (notably Robert Lucas) for “mathiness.” Now he is chastising the profession for enabling deregulation that has wreaked havoc across the land.

I have to say his essay is unpersuasive, not to say incoherent. One way of framing the issue is to contrast the view of Keynes:

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

with that of Stigler (speaking of the passage of the Corn Laws):

economists exert a minor and scarcely detectable influence on the societies in which they live . . . if Cobden had spoken only Yiddish, and with a stammer, and Peel had been a narrow, stupid man, England would have moved toward free trade in grain as its agricultural classes declined and its manufacturing and commercial classes grew.

Romer is clearly in league with Keynes, rather than Stigler.

But he fails to make the case. This is true for many reasons. For one, he argues by anecdote, and hence his style is journalistic rather than rigorously scholarly. A few cherry-picked anecdotes–and Romer uses only three–are clearly insufficient to support Romer’s broader claim that the deregulation favored by many economists (not all) was on the whole baleful. There are entire areas of deregulation (e.g., transportation, telecommunications, restrictions on advertising) that he says nothing about, but which were the subject of massive scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s which demonstrated the inefficiency of the existing regulatory structure: the experience in these industries post-deregulation strongly supported the scholarship that criticized existing regulations.

One interesting example is pharmaceutical regulation, something that exercises Romer quite greatly. Sam Peltzman showed in the 1970s that efficacy regulation under the 1962 Drug Act amendments did not result in a reduction in the amount of inefficacious drugs introduced, but did reduce the rate of introduction of new, valuable therapies. All pain, no gain.

Romer has nothing to say about this.

With respect to pharma regulation, Romer blames the opioid crisis on “pliant pretend economist[s]” who “assume[d] the role of the philosopher-king—someone willing to protect the firm’s reckless behavior from government interference and to do so with a veneer of objectivity and scientific expertise.”

He doesn’t quote any economist, pretend, real or otherwise, playing the role of philosopher-king/academic scribbler whose frenzy regulators or legislators distilled into opioids. Instead, he says:

By the 1990s, such arguments were out of bounds, because the language and elaborate concepts of economists left no opening for more practically minded people to express their values plainly. And when the Drug Enforcement Administration finally tried to limit the distribution of these painkillers, pharmaceutical companies launched a massive lobbying effort in favor of a bill in Congress that would strip the DEA of the power to freeze suspicious narcotics shipments by drug companies. It is a safe bet that these lobbyists made their arguments to Congress in the language of growth, incentives, and the danger of innovation-killing regulations. The push succeeded, and the DEA lost one of its most powerful tools for saving lives.

Of course, during earlier eras, regulators allowed many industries to profit massively from products known to be harmful; Big Tobacco is the most obvious example. But until the 1980s, the overarching trend was toward restrictions that reined in these abuses. Progress was painfully slow, but it was progress nonetheless, and life expectancy increased. The difference today is that the United States is going backward, and in many cases, economists—even those acting in good faith—have provided the intellectual cover for this retreat.

So apparently, by highjacking the language economists prevented rational debate, thereby rendering legislators and regulators defenseless against predatory corporations.

Or something.

That is, not only does Romer fail to show that deregulation was on the whole detrimental, he also fails to show that economists had anything much to do with making it happen. He asserts the Keynesian line, but does not come close to proving it.

Indeed, the reverse is true. Romer’s argument actually supports Stigler’s claim, which can be “distilled” thus: money talks. Or to use Keynes’ term: vested interests talk. What economists said or didn’t say or how they said it or what language they said it in (English, Yiddish, Aramaic) was nothing, compared to the lobbying might of the pharma industry. So not only does Romer fail to identify any actual economist who advocated the policy that infuriates Romer, he fails to show that what any economist said meant squat for the outcome.

Indeed, this is precisely why a certain species of economists (Stigler, and well, yours truly) was/is so skeptical about regulation: it tends to favor the interests of the regulated. It always has, and it always will. Economic efficiency is a secondary consideration, and what economists have to say on the matter has little (if any) bearing on the outcome. If anything, Romer’s piece is a case for Public Choice economics. But that has implications that Romer would no doubt find inimical.

Romer’s other big anecdote is from the financial industry, namely the infamous Goldman Abacus transaction in which Goldman served as the middleman between John Paulson (who wanted to short US real estate) and a hapless German bank.

The stand in for all economists in this anecdote is one sorta economist: Alan Greenspan. Apparently, Greenspan was the Representative Agent for the economics profession. This is beyond simplistic. Insultingly so.

Another bogeyman in Romer’s telling is Michael Jensen:

Michael Jensen, an economist who helped reshape the U.S. financial sector in the late twentieth century. Jensen rightly worried about several problems that bedeviled the market, including how to keep corporate executives from promoting their own interests at the expense of shareholders. His proposed solutions—hostile takeovers, debt, and executive bonuses that tracked the share price of a firm, among other changes—were widely adopted.

Corporate shareholders saw their earnings skyrocket, but the main effect of the changes was to empower the financial sector, which Greenspan, for his part, worked doggedly to unfetter. As Lemann writes, Jensen’s ideas also helped chip away at the power of the traditional Corporate Man—the sort of executive whose pursuit of profit was tempered somewhat by a commitment to noneconomic norms, among them a belief in the need to foster trust and build long-term relationships across company lines. Taking his place was Transaction Man, who focused on little more than driving up share prices by any means necessary.

There is so much wild generalization here that I am at a loss of where to begin. For one thing, Jensen’s heyday was the 1980s LBO and hostile takeover boom, which had been largely stymied by regulation by the early-1990s, long before the Financial Crisis. (So much for the power of Jensen’s advocacy! Jensen’s hero, Michael Milken, was in jail, FFS.)

I am at a real loss to trace the connection between Jensen’s advocacy of measures to control managerial agency costs and, say, the real estate securitization boom of the mid-2000s. Romer certainly doesn’t lay out the road map. Here merely cites Jensen’s views and asserts some connection with those of Greenspan, and proclaims QED! The South Park Underwear Gnomes’ argumentation was tighter.

And again, what economists said was almost certainly irrelevant here. There were powerful forces–political as well as economic forces–behind the real estate boom and crash. Homeownership became a totem for politicians of both parties in the 1990s and 2000s. Wall Street was on board, because it realized this could be an engine for profit. Main Street financial institutions were on board for the same reason.

So what if Alan Greenspan was cool with this? If he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have been around long. Economic and political interests found a convenient mouthpiece: the mouthpiece didn’t create the economic and political forces. At the end of the day, economists would not have mattered, and the financial sector would have gotten the mouthpiece it wanted.

This part made me roll my eyes:

the traditional Corporate Man—the sort of executive whose pursuit of profit was tempered somewhat by a commitment to noneconomic norms, among them a belief in the need to foster trust and build long-term relationships across company lines. Taking his place was Transaction Man, who focused on little more than driving up share prices by any means necessary.

Evidence for this “commitment to noneconomic norms, among them a belief in the need to foster trust and build long-term relationships across company lines” among 1960s-1970s corporate executives? None whatsoever. This is an ex cathedra pronouncement that bears no relationship to the reality of self-serving corporate management during this era–management that a 1970s Romer probably would have inveighed against as venal and self-serving (as many criticisms of managerial capitalism did).

No, the issue here is not Corporate Man vs. Transaction Man. It is Straw Man (Romer’s, specifically) vs. Reality.

Romer gives economists both too much credit, and too little. By painting all economists who criticized regulation (based on empirical evidence and theory) as stooges, he gives them too little credit. By blaming them for massive public policy failures, he gives them too much. If only we had such influence.

Does economics matter? Yes. Do economists matter? Not really. And the reason for these answers is the same. Economic considerations–distributive considerations in particular, as they operate through the political and regulatory system–drive political and regulatory outcomes. Economists can comment on this, analyze it, and even advocate particular outcomes. But their participation has as much effect on the outcome as a sportscaster’s does on who wins the Super Bowl.