This Sunday the NY Times supplies a friendly debate between two titans named Glenn Hubbard and Larry Summers. The author of this piece, Adam Davidson, appears to believe in the key role childhood experience plays in shaping us in later life. Without delving into any Freudian theories, he pays close to attention to each man's upbringing and the political conversation at the dinner table when each man was a child. If economics is a science then why would such facts matter in explaining their respective policy views today? Clearly, Davidson does not believe that economics is a science.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, many cynics want to view academic economists as political ideologues who know how to reverse engineer "fancy" mathematical models to generate the predictions they already "knew" were correct (i.e we need more stimulus, or reduce debt now!). We, the academic economists, are viewed as having false credibility because we know math and statistics and we cloak our opinions in what appears to be hard science.
How can economists earn back our credibility? Would modesty help? These are dangerous days.
