do conservative economists exist?
After my talk at GMU on Friday, I was lucky enough to have dinner with a fun group of policy folks and economists. The discussion ranged over a lot of great topics, but here’s one question I’d like to share: Are there really any conservative economists?
This question may surprise you because economics is considered the most conservative branch of the social sciences. To get the discussion, let me explain the definitions. First, by “economist,” they clearly meant a professional PhD holding economist. Not the policy wonks you’ll find around DC. Second, by “conservative,” they mean someone who is socially conservative – anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-drug legalization, a Bill Bennett style culture warrior, pro-life, evangelical Christian, etc.
The observation was that economists range from liberal (e.g., Paul Krugman) to libertarian (e.g., Milton Friedman). And this is backed up by survey evidence. On social issues, economists tend to be fairly liberal, even in comparison with other social scientists. They are conservative when it comes to economic policy such as minimum wages and price controls. It was argued that economists are rarely socially conservative, while many are economically conservative.
Do you buy this observation? Can you think of prominent economists who are socially conservative?
Just a few names to throw into the ring:
Thomas Sowell
Walter E. Williams
Adam Smith
FA Hayek
Moses VonMisses
You are right, it is rare to find a conservative economist who is not more of a libertarian. Could this be that the study of economics takes the conservative into the libertarian camp because of the limits of economics in understanding the human condition? I
Andrew K. Boyle
July 25, 2011 at 7:14 pm
From my knowledge, I think Thomas Sowell might be the only person who might be in the running for being a social conservative. I am not sure that the concept of the modern social conservative existed in the time of Adam Smith. Williams, Hayek, and Mises, I think, are/were not social conservatives.
fabiorojas
July 25, 2011 at 7:27 pm
Certainly not Smith or Hayek. Sowell, yes.
Mainstream-right economists are likely to be libertarian-ish on drugs and immigration. But I do think one often hears very conservative just-so stories about gender and family from economists, some of them ev-psych, some revealed-preference, some comparative advantage.
Jacob T. Levy
July 25, 2011 at 7:34 pm
Smith was a moral philosopher who looks pretty socially conservative when reading “Theory of Moral Sentiments” the prequel to Wealth of Nations. Smith may have been the first social conservative. Williams criticism of the modern welfare state extend far beyond the failure to produce results, but he condemns them on the grounds of being antithetical to the idea of liberty. I would also note that Hayek condemned socialism on moral grounds in addition to practical failures. One more name to consider, Henry Hazlitt?
Very good question.
Andrew K. Boyle
July 25, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Fabio,
Was Dan Klein at the dinner? I ask because he’s done work with Lotta Stern on the political views of social scientists (including economists) and so would be in a good place to tell us how many economists are social conservatives (or at least social moderates given that laws against heroin and prostitution are pretty mainstream in American politics).
Fabio, Jacob, and Andrew,
Hayek developed a conservative streak in his later work on social institutions and you’ll sometimes hear moderate libertarians describing a presumption in favor of received social institutions as a “Hayekian point.” (I’m never sure whether they do so because they simply don’t know that this position is usually associated with Kirk’s reading of Edmund Burke or if they are deliberately citing Hayek’s articulation of the idea for rhetorical effect with their fellow libertarians). Nonetheless, I still think overall it’s fair to describe Hayek as more a libertarian than a social conservative. At most, he’s standing athwart history calmly suggesting “let’s consider if maybe we should stop.”
Agree with Fabio and Jacob though that it is at best anachronistic and at worst simply wrong to describe Adam Smith as a “conservative,” even if one considers Moral Sentiment as well as Wealth of Nations. (Smith associated with Hume and his moral philosophy followed Hume in being largely secular). Note that Patrick Allitt includes Smith in his history of the Anglo-American conservative tradition but he is pretty explicit that this is only because 150 years after the fact Smith would be adopted by the fusionist ideology we call “conservative.” In the late 18th century context favoring free markets was a fairly radical liberal position that was opposed by the conservatives of its day.
Andrew,
You seem to be confusing “utilitarian” with “libertarian.” Just because somebody considers a big state to be intrinsically immoral rather than just inefficient doesn’t mean they’re a conservative. For instance, Ayn Rand was not a conservative by any reasonable definition (or at least Buckley and Chambers didn’t think so) but her objections to the state were more moral than practical.
gabrielrossman
July 25, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Klein wasn’t there, but if you know the surveys of economists from Klein/Stern and Caplan, you know the general drift is that economists are conservative economically and liberal socially. BTW, it was a room mixed up with liberal and libt’n economists.
fabiorojas
July 25, 2011 at 9:01 pm
I pretty much agree with Jacob here—there are plenty of economists who are broadly libertarian or classically liberal on much economic and some social questions, and thus often quite radical with respect to the standard axis of US politics, but who will pivot on a dime to become just-so/self-selection/revealed preference reactionaries on questions involving “durable inequalities” of other sorts. (They often talk themselves into the view that this is not conservatism but in fact another aspect of their radicalism, switching their reference class to terrible feminists, or our notionally Marxist academy, or other social scientists who just don’t understand incentives, or what have you.) The nominally radical libertarian who is functionally indistinguishable from a party-line Republican voter is a pretty well-known type. This sort of person tends not to apply revealed-preference logic to their own voting behavior.
Kieran
July 25, 2011 at 11:55 pm
I’m not sure you can be ‘liberal’ socially yet conservative ‘economically’? Seems like a paradox to me…
Jon
July 26, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Bryan Caplan calls economic historian John Nye his favorite social conservative.
There are definitely similarities between Hayek and Burke. But Burke himself had been a Whig (possibly a radical one in his early days, in the view of both Rothbard and Godwin) and became more closely associated with conservatism with the french revolution. Oakeshott is another comparison, and he thought Hayek had erroneously created an ideology. To Hayek’s left we can compare Popper and Karl Polanyi. Polanyi actually tried defending socialist interventionism against Hayek by arguing that it was reactive, tying it with the old aristocratic/”Tory” opposition to whiggery.
Wonks Anonymous
July 26, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Wonks,
Interesting to consider that as an economic historian Nye isn’t your typical economist. I know he attributes this methodological orientation to his lack of interest in discussions of minarchist libertopias. Wonder if there’s a direct or indirect connection to his social attitudes (which I’ve never heard him discuss).
Good points about Burke and Polanyi.
gabrielrossman
July 26, 2011 at 8:29 pm
Lawrence Kudlow, Dick Armey are both Ph.D. economists who are socially conservative. Newt Gingrich is a Ph.D. but in history.
Adam Smith definitely.
Edmund Burke is the founder of Conservative thought.
I think the question has two biases:
(1) By favoring “academia”, you are limiting the pool to institutions that are almost universally controlled by the left. Many conservative Ph.D.’s simply refuse to put up with a far left environment and go to jobs with Wall Street or corporations that are more connected to economic reality. I am sure a conservative college like Hillsdale would have economists who are conservative.
(2) Secondly, the social part is not a significant part of the economist’s job description, unless you are a leftist. A typical conservative economist probably leaves it out of his work because it is not relevant to determining prices and demand and he or she doesn’t view the job as social engineering.
RJ Dragon
July 27, 2011 at 8:33 pm
I don’t see many conservatives in anything that is mathematics heavy.
Engineering runs the same spectrum liberal to libertarian.
rarianrakista
July 27, 2011 at 10:42 pm
rarianrakista, here I linked to some data on which fields are relatively liberal/conservative in academia. Math heavy fields seemed somewhat middling (I think math itself had a slightly greater conservative representation than overall faculty).
TGGP
July 28, 2011 at 4:01 am
Someone mentioned Walter Williams — he’s conservative for a GMU economist, but he’s definitely a libertarian. My best explanation for the phenomenon: One of the basic lessons of elementary econ is that liberty is a good starting point to maximize efficiency, and this applies to much more than simple market transactions.
Zac Gochenour
July 28, 2011 at 8:35 am
From my own school experience, I wouldn’t say economists are conservatives. They are anti-populist, which is very different.
Guillermo
July 28, 2011 at 1:27 pm
I know quite a few socially conservative engineers, though that may be because I went to college in a very conservative part of the country and with a strong engineering program. Also see the overrepresentation of engineers in terrorism, as seen in Diego Gambetta’s work (Crooked Timber coverage).
Trey
July 28, 2011 at 3:11 pm
What qualifies someone as a social conservative? Possible topics: abortion, evolution, gay marriage, certain forms of Christianity. Does constitutional interpretation count?
George Will got a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton before becoming a journalist. Though he believes in evolution. Laughs.
Phil Gramm has a Ph.D. in economics and taught economics at Texas A&M for about ten years.
David Hoopes
July 28, 2011 at 4:29 pm
@ David, George Will’s Ph.D. is in politics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Will
J Hall
July 29, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Ah, I stand corrected. (and I believe in evolution too lest my laughter be misconstrued).
David Hoopes
July 30, 2011 at 3:22 am
The definition of Conservative has broadened in recent years to its own detriment. The idea that one must share particular religious views and, to a slightly lesser degree, agree completely and without any caveats with every political issue of the day is not useful or logically consistent. I have gone to “tea party” meetings where candidate after candidate was eliminated on things like whether they believed the earth was created in six days. Another was eliminated because he had said “I don’t think we are going to round up 80 year old grandmothers and deport them” Believe it or not belief that abortion is murder is not an “economic” idea. I suggest that “conservative economists” is a more useful phrase when it is the ECONOMICS of the person that is “conservative”, not their politics or whether they “go for it” on fourth and three in the third quarter. OK??
moronpolitics
June 15, 2012 at 4:50 pm