Andrew Gelman — A quick rule of thumb is that when someone seems to be acting like a jerk, an economist will defend the behavior as being the essence of morality, but when someone seems to be doing something nice, an economist will raise the bar and argue that he’s not being nice at all.

A statistics professor looks at the economics profession.

This is an awkward topic to write about. I’m not saying I think economists are mean people; they just seem to have a default mode of thought which is a little perverse.

In the traditional view of Freudian psychiatrists, which no behavior can be taken at face value, and it takes a Freudian analyst to decode the true meaning. Similarly, in the world of pop economics, or neoclassical economics, any behavior that might seem good, or generous (for example, not maxing out your prices at a popular restaurant) is seen to be damaging of the public good—“unintended consequences” and all that—, while any behavior that might seem mean, or selfish, is actually for the greater good.

Let’s unpack this in five directions, from the perspective of the philosophy of science, the sociology of scientific professions, politics, the logic of rhetoric, and the logic of statistics....

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
A quick rule of thumb is that when someone seems to be acting like a jerk, an economist will defend the behavior as being the essence of morality, but when someone seems to be doing something nice, an economist will raise the bar and argue that he’s not being nice at all.
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University