Economists generally share the ruling values of their societies, but their professional competence does not consist in translating popular wishes into an awe-inspiring professional language. Their competence consists in understanding how an economic system works under alternative institutional frameworks. If they have anything of their own to contribute to the popular discussion of economic policy, it is some special understanding of the relationship between policies and the results of policies. The basic role of the scientist, therefore, is that of establishing the costs and benefits of alternative institutional arrangements. (Stigler, Presidential Address at the AEA, The American Economic Review, 1-2)
George J. Stigler was a Chicago-economist who won the Nobel prize (1982) "for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public regulation." But this citation does not quite capture what he become known for in the economics profession. In addition to an acerbic wit and a very robust defense of markets, he "deserves a great deal of the credit for getting economists to look at data and evidence." (The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics) Moreover, the entry on Stigler continues,"one could examine the actual effects of regulation, and not just theorize about them. Stigler devoted his entire 1964 presidential address to the American Economic Association to making this point. He argued that economists should study the effects of regulation and not just assume them."*
Yesterday, I noted the significant afterlife for the idea that "economists generally share the ruling values of their societies," which is a core assumption for the technocratic political ideal. Here I focus on the fact that that Stigler really is one of the economists that turned economics from relying on "the telling anecdote," (Stigler, 12) into a data-driven discipline (although his presidential address notes non-trivial predecessors on this score).** While Stigler may not have been able to foresee the extent to which economics would become data-mining, Stigler himself declared that "it is a scientific revolution of the very first magnitude-indeed I consider the so-called theoretical revolutions of a Ricardo, a Jevons, or a Keynes to have been minor revisions compared to the vast implications of the growing insistence upon quantification." (Stigler 17; the Kuhnian language is no accident--in fact, Stigler had theorized about scientific revolutions before Kuhn, and warmly welcomed Kuhn's Structure.) This declaration, he claims, "is prophecy, not preaching." (Stigler 17)
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