Twixt the Cup and the Lip: Mainstream Economics and the Formation of Economic Policy
Author(s)
Gordon, David M.
Abstract
Mainstream economists discuss economic policy as if all options are either right or wrong, but in their own research there is rarely any consensus. Scholarly economists who first posited a correlation between free trade and economic well-being considered their approach too complicated to be hastily used in policy decisions. As soon as free trade became part of US economic policy, however, these same neoclassical economists started acting as if any non-free trade policy would be fatal to the world’s economic status. Possible reasons for this contradiction in the way economists approach economic policy and the science of scholarly economics are discussed.
