Chris Dillow se heca, da bi potrebovali nov poklic – nekoga, ki bi znal javnost informirati o ekonomiji in o tem, kaj ekonomisti vedo in kaj ne:

In a comment here, I propose the creation of a new job, or jobs – professors for the public understanding of economics, analogous to the professorships at Bristol and Oxford which do the same for science.

I’m not thinking that such jobs should necessarily be part of a free market priesthood; there’s more to proper economics than “Markets work, ner, ner”. Instead, the role would be to try to inform the public of what economists know and don’t. This would consist of at least three objectives:

• to narrow the distance between the academic consensus and public opinion which is especially wide in the cases of fiscal policy and immigration.
•  to enhance the public image of economics – for example, by demonstrating that there are rough consensuses on many issues, and by telling people at every opportunity that macroeconomic forecasting is not proper economics.
•  to help people make better personal financial decisions by promoting financial literacy and by alerting people to the systematic cognitive biases that cause bad decision-making. For me, economics is not just – or even mainly – about policy, but about helping people with everyday decisions. There’s tons that economists can do here.

I’ve no doubt that such positions are desirable. What I doubt is whether they are feasible. Even if such jobs existed, I’m not sure their holders could succeed.

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