The EconomistAugust 8th 2020 Leaders 112 riot; to the uninformed, it sounded like a firm of architects.
In 2002 about half of Americans said they tolerated homosex-
uality; now nearly three-quarters do. One study found that sup-
port for same-sex marriage increased rapidly in 2006-10 among
Americans with a gay or lesbian friend, but fell among those with
none. Even in countries where a majority remains hostile,
change is coming. The proportion of Indians who said that gay
people should be accepted rose from 15% in 2013 to 37% last year.
Though an attempt to overturn Kenya’s gay-sex ban failed last
year, the publicity it generated persuaded more locals to come
out. That helps explain why over the same period the share of
Kenyans who tolerate homosexuality nearly doubled, to 14%. In
most places the young are more gay-friendly than the old, so dis-
crimination will surely dwindle as the prejudiced pass away.
From Iran to Uganda, autocrats often caricature homosexual-
ity as a foreign vice. Some even claim that there are no gay people
in their country. In such places the most effective campaigners
are, therefore, local gay people. The best thing liberals elsewhere
can do is to provide financial and legal support to gay-rights
groups and grant asylum to those who flee persecution.Got to let it show
Mr Wildeblood’s motivation for writing a book in 1955 in which
he baldly stated “I am a homosexual” was, he said, “to turn on
more lights, revealing, in place of the blurred and shadowy fig-
ure of the newspaper photographs, a man differing from other
men only in one respect.” The rest of those lights are coming on,
one by one. 7E
conomics is a“disgrace”, according to Claudia Sahm, a for-
mer Federal Reserve researcher, who has chosen to “no lon-
ger identify” as an economist. Among several flaws, the profes-
sion fails to nurture the young, she argues, or listen to outsiders.
A survey by the American Economic Association (aea) found
that only 31% of economists under the age of 44 felt valued with-
in the discipline.
All this must be off-putting to youngsters beginning the long
(and lengthening) journey into the profession (see Finance sec-
tion). They may wonder if there is room for their ideas in a dis-
cipline that can seem hidebound, hierarchical and homogenous.
Will they invigorate economics or will it indoctrinate them?
Budding economists can draw comfort from our series of six
economics briefs that begins this week. Each looks at an issue
(competition policy, minimum wages, inflation, the dollar, cul-
ture and public debt) that has prompted econo-
mists to revisit their field’s presumptions. Over
the past decade or two, the profession has be-
come more relaxed about minimum wages, in-
flation and public debt; less relaxed about mo-
nopoly power; less enamoured of flexible
exchange rates; and more open to deep, institu-
tional explanations of wealth and poverty.
What does it take to change economists’
minds? New ideas are not enough. The theory of monopsony,
which explains why a minimum wage may help employment,
not hurt it, had been around for at least 60 years before main-
stream economics accepted its use in many low-wage labour
markets. Recent nonchalance about high levels of public debt
may seem new and mould-breaking. But the fresh thinking rests
on theories set out in the 1950s and 1960s.
New facts are more compelling. The persistence of low inter-
est rates despite high public debt has left an impression, as has
the pre-pandemic combination of low inflation and low unem-
ployment. The dollar’s rally in the global financial crisis show-
cased its peculiar role in the international financial system, as
have various emerging-market tantrums since. Fresh evidence
also matters in microeconomics. New Jersey’s decision to raise
its wage floor in 1992 by more than neighbouring states (despitetipping into a recession) provided the natural experiment re-
quired to change economists’ minds about minimum wages.
New facts, then, are more persuasive than new ideas. But al-
though an alternative theory is not a sufficient condition for a
change of heart, it is often necessary. It takes a model to beat a
model, as economists like to say. They sometimes cling to pro-
positions in defiance of the facts simply because they have noth-
ing better to replace them with.
That raises a third condition for persuasiveness. To convert
economists to your cause, it is not enough to give them some-
thing new to believe. You must also offer them something fruit-
ful to do. Appeal to their hands as well as their heads. Economists
will jump on a revolution that gives them new toys or techniques
to play with. This may explain why they have become more en-
thusiastic about institutional explanations of the wealth and
poverty of nations. They cannot rerun history or
sprinkle institutions randomly across countries
to test their long-term effects. But they have
found ingenious proxies for this kind of random
variation. Economists, like many others, relish
the chance to display their cleverness.
New facts and clever techniques help shift
economic opinion. Does this also require new
economists? Not necessarily. Some big names
have changed their minds, or at least their tone. Olivier Blan-
chard is less fiscally cautious today than he was ten years ago as
imf chief economist, and Narayana Kocherlakota is much more
doveish about monetary policy than when he was first appointed
to head a Federal Reserve bank. The heretical tribes on the
fringes of economics yearn to sack Rome. But it is more efficient
to convert the emperor.
It is nonetheless striking that, in several of the areas covered
by our series, vital work was done by economists who were in
their 30s at the time (although all of them were already at elite in-
stitutions). According to the aea’s survey, only 5% of economists
aged under 44 feel they have a great deal of power within the dis-
cipline. But the young may have one power denied to their el-
ders: the freedom to imagine a future economics, unencum-
bered by too heavy an intellectual stake in its past. 7When the facts change
Economics sometimes changes its mindThe dismal yet flexible science