Smart people think like economists

From a study by Bryan Caplan and Stephen Miller, published in the latest issue of Intelligence:

Education is by far the strongest predictor of whether a non-economist will share the economic beliefs of the average economist. (Caplan, 2001) Is the effect of education as large as it seems? Or is education largely a proxy for cognitive ability? Using data from the General Social Survey (GSS), we show that the estimated effect of education sharply falls after controlling for intelligence. In fact, education is driven down to second place, and intelligence replaces it at the top of the list of variables that make people "think like economists." Thus, to a fair degree education is proxy for intelligence, though there are some areas—international economics in particular—where education still dominates. An important implication is that the political externalities of education may not be as large as they initially appear.

Evidence that the Eureka College graduate was wiser than the Harvard Law graduate

Presidents and the economy

Audacious' post on immigration and unemployment got me thinking about the connection between the president and the condition of the economy. I've put a graph up of the trend in unemployment since 1948. Maybe my approach is too simple, but I looked to see if unemployment fell or was flat during each president's tenure, paying less attention to their first year or two because conditions don't change overnight. (I also paid attention to the year following their exit). I rated each president as good, mixed or bad:

Rating on the economy

Bush II mixed

Clinton good

Bush I mixed

Reagan good

Carter bad

Ford good

Nixon mixed

Johnson good

Kennedy good

Eisenhower mixed

Truman mixed

Like any good conservative, I would assume that the economy would perform better under a Republican administration. But it doesn't seem clear to me at all. Three out of the five good presidents were Democrats (and I'm tempted to throw out Ford since his tenure was so short). In fact, it's not clear that Reagan was better than Clinton. Four out of five of the so-so presidents have been Republicans. Carter is the only Democrat stinker.

To be honest, economics and foreign policy are not my top priorities. Centrist elites control foreign policy, and to be honest I don't see black and white differences in results on economic issues. I get worked up most about other issues like immigration. Am I wrong?

Extreme liberals think sociology is more scientific than economics!

Continuing the theme of the retarded liberal, GSS respondents answered questions about how scientific they thought certain disciplines were. Look at the two charts. Extreme liberals think sociology is more scientific than economics! Extreme conservatives, by contrast, know better.