Should Economists Spend More Time Discussing Externalities?
Should Economists Spend More Time Discussing Externalities? Sunday February 10, 2008 I think they should, so I don’t entirely agree with Bryan Caplan‘s viewpoint: When Princeton’s Roland Benabou visited GMU a couple weeks ago, he made an argument I’ve occasionally heard before: Non-economists would disagree with economists less, and respect our views more, if we put more emphasis on the concept of externalities. When economists talk about markets, the argument goes, we usually seem tone deaf to non-economists’ concerns. If we put more emphasis on the concept of externalities, non-economists could see that it is easy to translate their concerns into our language – and that we have every reason to take their concerns seriously… If we explain the concept of externalities properly, non-economists will continue to give us the cold s
