Economics

Where the field disagrees

Who to read first

The voices we picked out on these 5 questions, then anyone else on record about several of them. The number is how many of the questions they are on, not a ranking of who is right.

• Olivier Blanchard2 of 5
• Paul Krugman1 of 5
• Patrick Collison1 of 5
• Branko Milanovic1 of 5
• Hannah Ritchie4 of 5
• Ray Dalio1 of 5
• John H. Cochrane3 of 5
• Brian Potter1 of 5
• Ramez Naam1 of 5
• Tyler Cowen3 of 5
• Casey Handmer2 of 5
• Elon Musk1 of 5
• Scott Sumner1 of 5
• Emmanuel Macron2 of 5
• Paul Graham2 of 5

Who changed their mind

What moved somebody is usually what the argument turns on. Newest first.

1. Olivier Blanchard · 6 Nov 2023

   No longer holdsWhen safe interest rates are expected to remain below growth rates for a long time, rolling over public debt without later tax increases is feasible and public debt may carry no fiscal cost.

   Across advanced economies, the celebrated ( r - g ), i.e., the difference between the interest rate and the growth rate, appears to have durably changed sign or, at a minimum, to have gone from a substantially negative number to a number closer to zero.

   On Does public debt cost what we think it does?

2. Ramez Naam · 14 May 2020

   No longer holdsAfter four more doublings of installed solar capacity, solar electricity will cost about 3 cents per kwh in the sunniest areas and 4.5 cents per kwh in moderately sunny areas.

   Both of those forecasts were wrong. Solar has plunged in price faster than anyone – including me – predicted.

   On Where does the energy come from, and what is stopping it?

3. Scott Sumner · 6 Sept 2010

   No longer holdsAggressive quantitative easing should raise long-term interest rates, because effective monetary stimulus raises them.

   I predicted that aggressive QE would raise long term interest rates, a view which seemed to be refuted by the response on T-bond yields to the March 2009 Fed QE announcement.

   On Does public debt cost what we think it does?

Ways of thinking this field uses

Mental models that keep turning up in these arguments. Our pick; each page holds the claims behind it, in the words of whoever said them.

• Incentives Look at what people are rewarded for; it explains more behaviour than what they say, your own included.
• Specialise and trade Do what you are relatively best at and trade for the rest (comparative advantage); it holds until power or change breaks it.
• Trade-offs Every choice gives something up, so name the cost; and check, because some trade-offs everyone assumes are not real.
• Second-order thinking Ask "and then what?": follow a decision past its first effect to the ones that come after.
• Collective action problems What everyone would gain from, nobody provides alone, so shared goods need someone or something to hold people together.
• Cheaper means more, not less Make something cheaper to use and people use so much more of it that the total goes up (Jevons paradox).

What you can read here

1. 1 Systematically Biased Beliefs about Economics: Robust Evidence of Judgemental Anomalies from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy

   Bryan Caplan · 1 Apr 2002 · 3 korrents

   Ordinary people and economists systematically disagree about the economy, and the gap survives checks for economists' self-interest, their politics, and even general education. This shows the public's economic views really are biased in a robust way that simple alternatives cannot explain away. It reports survey analysis that rejects self-serving and ideological accounts and finds training effects remain large after education controls.

   economistsAmericabehavioural science

2. 2 High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being (with Angus Deaton)

   Daniel Kahneman · 7 Sept 2010 · 3 korrents

   happinessbehavioural science

3. 3 Adaptive constructive processes and the future of memory (American Psychologist, 2012)

   Daniel Schacter · 3 korrents

   Americabehavioural science

4. 4 Applying Behavioral Sciences in the Service of Four Major Economic Problems

   Jason Furman · 1 Oct 2016 · 2 korrents

   Behavioral science keeps inventing tools and then looking for problems they can solve, when it should start with big economic questions and build insights to match. That flip would let behavioral ideas work alongside traditional policy tools on the large-scale problems economic policymakers actually face. It is an argument for reversing the usual order of applying behavioral science to policy, pushing against the current tools-first approach.

   behavioural science

5. 5 Acemoglu & Restrepo, "Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets" (NBER working paper 23285)

   Daron Acemoglu, Pascual Restrepo · 1 Mar 2017 · 3 korrents

   Adding industrial robots from 1990 to 2007 cut local US jobs and wages—one more robot per thousand workers lowered employment by 0.18-0.34 points and pay by 0.25-0.5 percent. That damage is distinct from Chinese or Mexican imports, offshoring, and other computers or machines. It reports local-market estimates built on robots competing with people for tasks, using each area’s industry mix and national robot adoption, and checks those areas were not already declining before 1990.

   AI and jobsAmericarobotics

6. 6 Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change (with 1 co-authors)

   Adam Mastroianni · 7 Mar 2022 · 4 korrents

   People badly misjudge how Americans' opinions on big social issues have shifted over decades, usually thinking there's been far more change toward liberal views than the polls actually show. These mistakes can lend support to policies people might reject if they knew the real history of opinions, and can even turn imaginary trends into real ones. It reports survey results matching people's guesses about long-term attitude shifts against actual polling data, and finds the errors stem from a shared stereotype that today is much more liberal than the past.

   politicsbehavioural scienceattitude changedemocracy

7. 7 Chaos and Misallocation under Price Controls (with 2 co-authors)

   Alex Tabarrok · 12 Feb 2026 · 4 korrents

   When prices are frozen below market levels, sellers become indifferent about where to ship, so tiny cost differences send all supply to some markets and starve others completely. That feast-or-famine pattern creates losses from goods going to the wrong places that range from roughly one to nine times the usual loss from simply having less overall, calibrated to the 1973-74 U.S. gasoline crisis. It proves all-or-nothing outcomes are the normal result under price ceilings and gives bounds on the waste without assuming demand shapes, going past the standard quantity-loss measure and random-allocation benchmarks.

   market efficiencybenchmarksgovernmentprice gouging