Perhaps in stark contrast to my last blog post, in this post I want to celebrate the good economics can do.
I have Eric Crampton to thank for introducing me to the wonderful work of Emily Oster. Oster's most famous book, Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong -- and What You Really Need to Know was a surprisingly engrossing read considering I have never been pregnant, have not been trying to get pregnant, and probably won't be getting pregnant anytime soon unless I end up birthing the next baby Jesus or something.
What I got out of Oster's book was a new appreciation of the economics. I learnt about the value economists can add in simply reading and evaluating the damn studies, and making sense of the data and evidence. You wouldn't think this is such a big deal. But as it turns out, in an area like pregnancy advice, it's clear that a lot of the time this just wasn't being done. And there are very real consequences. 'Conventional wisdom' based on bad studies or ignorance of better studies is everywhere when you start looking.
Another value-add of Oster's work is that it is all about empowering individuals to think about risk and make decisions for themselves based on their risk preferences. This isn't just applicable to decisions related to pregnancy, although pregnancy turns out to be a really good example as the stakes are a lot higher and people may be a lot more risk averse than they would be otherwise. It's enabling individuals to make decisions related to their health and wellbeing, based on the best possible evidence, and knowledge of the stuff they still don't know (known unknowns). A little bit of data/evidence literacy can be a great thing!
Finally, because of my academic and career background, I tend to see economics and policy as inter-related. Obviously, this is a narrow view. There's a lot of economics that doesn't even touch on policy (and a whole lot of policy that willfully ignores economics!). But a lot of the most interesting and useful economics has to do with personal decision making: from finding a partner, to how to raise your children, to optimising your health and wellbeing, to deciding where to eat and where to live. In the absence of government telling you what to do at every stage of your life (I'm being optimistic about the future here), it helps to have analytical tools available. And economics is a very useful part of that toolkit.
Anyway, why am I talking about Emily Oster right now? Because Vox have published an excellent article on her and her career. Oster has been extremely prominent in the US media lately for her work on Covid-19 and reopening schools. As with almost any Covid-related topic, and Covid in the US in particular, the views have been considered controversial. Unsurprisingly, I recommend reading the whole thing. But here are some of the quotes I found most interesting:
This is why Oster reaches hero-status in my mind. It's easy to see an information gap and complain. Or wait for the government to get its act together. But whether you agree with her commentary and conclusions or not, the fact that individuals like her can see a massive information gap and work to fill it without access to the best resources available is worth celebrating.
Oster says she doesn’t mind being criticized on the merits of her work, but she bristles at the notion that it’s not her place to talk about Covid-19 and schools.
“I find this credentialism frustrating because I think that it is an argument that people use to not bring multiple voices to a debate,” she says. “It’s absolutely true that there are a set of tools that come with epidemiology that I don’t have,” she adds. But she says she believes she has another set of tools — “thinking about risks and analyzing data and looking at evidence” — that are useful in their own right.
I think this sucks, and these attitudes prevail in NZ too. Sure, there were/are economists in NZ with bad takes on the pandemic. But that's not a reason to dismiss the analytical framework they can bring to the table. In an ideal world, epidemiology and economics would work together. But there seem to be people hell-bent on making this a war of the professions.
Oster’s trajectory over the last year is emblematic of the way a failure of federal leadership often left Americans rudderless, with seemingly nowhere to turn for guidance on life-or-death decisions. And now, as schools and the economy reopen and many are reevaluating their relationships to authority, data, and advice, Oster may be most relevant not for the times she’s tried to tell policymakers what to do, but for the times when she’s empowered people to make choices for themselves.
In the face of incompetent governments, people need the information that will help them make the best choices for themselves and their families. I'm grateful we didn't face the same problem here in NZ, but it's a lesson worth filing nonetheless: sometimes you cannot wait for the government to tell you what the right thing to do is.
Indeed, Oster is a cautious speaker — choosing her words meticulously, rarely showing emotion, unfailingly gracious to her critics.
This is who I want to be when I grow up. Too bad nearly all of these qualities are considered flaws generally, and more so when you're a woman.
Though she continued her academic work, she was increasingly seen publicly as a parenting expert (“She’s on the cover of Parenting Today; she’s not on the cover of The Economist,” Johnson notes).
Ah yes, because real economists are the crystal ball gazers and the ones who make complicated and fancy models that fail the real-world test. I'm not one to cry sexism for the hell of it. I'll let you make up your mind on that.