… delivers a wonderful commentary on tonight’s Marketplace program. Subject: Why doesn’t the American Economics Association have a code of ethics? Especially given all the undisclosed corporate conflicts of interest among economists who advise the government?
An excerpt:
Long before the current financial crisis burst upon us, Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer was taken to court to face accusations of advancing his own financial interests while receiving support from U.S. taxpayers to advise Russians on the best way to develop a stock market.
Both Professor Shleifer and Harvard University agreed to settle the case with no admission of wrongdoing, but paid hefty financial penalties. The case quickly disappeared from sight.
But what could undermine our professional prestige more than suspicion of unethical behavior?
You remember Shleifer. Did Harvard ever come down hard on him!
Harvard University, Shleifer and the Justice department reached an agreement under which the university paid $26.5 million to settle the five-year-old lawsuit. Shleifer was also responsible for paying $2 million dollars worth of damages…
[Shleifer] remains on Harvard’s faculty. However, according to the Boston Globe, he has been stripped of his honorary title of Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Economics.
Ouch! He doesn’t get to be Mr Whipple anymore!
February 22nd, 2011 at 10:08PM
Well, UD, a few posts below you quote a colleague bemoaning that business students think that corporate social responsibility “..merely rhetoric designed to fool environmentalists, consumer advocates and other do-gooders”. Why do you think we are less enlightened than our brethren from B-school?
Simple reason: We attract the more mathematically minded persons (some call it borderline Asperger) – and hence we hate hypocrisy.
BTW, economists are not alone: Sometimes, engineers share the same insight:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-12-07/
February 22nd, 2011 at 10:48PM
The Dilbert’s wonderful, econprof. Thanks for the link.
February 24th, 2011 at 1:31PM
Perhaps you know the classic bit of doggerel: “You cannot ever bribe or twist, the freeborn British journalist/Seeing what unbribed he’ll do, you realize there’s no reason to.” Most economists don’t need to be bribed to devise studies that favor the interests of giant corporations and the super-rich: they really believe that favoring the interests of such groups is the right policy.
February 24th, 2011 at 3:34PM
In the provinces: True. They are sincere.