- Get together a online panel (termed the IGM Economics Expert Panel) of the biggest brains in economic research. Real heavy hitters – researchers at the top of their profession at the most prestigious of research universities with an interest in public policy. Nobel Laureates and folks who have sat on the President’s Council of Economics.
- Make sure that the panel comprises Democrat, Republican, and Independent viewpoints and a mixture of both younger and older researchers.
- Pose a series of relevant, contemporary, economic policy questions every week or so to the panel.
- Record their answers and an associated confidence weighting.
- Aggregate and publish the results.
Here is the panel website, with hyperlinks to the various policy questions which the experts have already tackled. Good stuff. Some of the policy questions I found particularly interesting:
A non-trivial segment of the voting public truly believes that research (in any discipline) that is done at leading US research universities is skewed to the Left, by definition, because of some Vast Left Wing Conspiracy that has infiltrated academia. If you aren’t in that segment, you may find this website that I stumbled across interesting. I know I did.
How do I plan to, well, use this? Well, I am not an expert in economics. I understand some of the basic theories, but if seems to me to that there are so many factors and dependent variables at play in an organism as complicated as the US economy. So I need all the help I can get. I absolutely reject Economic Talking Points from both sides. It is just not as simple as they make it out to be.
If I see that there is strong consensus (and associated strong confidence) for a particular economic policy across this diverse group, then I will look very skeptically at any alternative viewpoint. Not saying that I would rule that viewpoint out – the opinions of this panel aren’t unimpeachable. But the folks advocating the alternative viewpoint better bring it, not just assert it.
Nothing wrong with being a more informed citizen, is there? Or you can just get your economic expertise from the chattering classes at DailyKos, MSNBC, Fox News, and EIB Network. (Poor Rush – He just about broke a blood vessel trying to come to grips with seasonally adjusted unemployment numbers when I was tuned in a couple of Friday’s ago,)
