I do think there is scope for normative economics, I’m just not sure many economists are well placed to provide value judgements. The subject that used to provide all the value judgements for policy analysts and economists was political economy. However, us economists strung them up for being to normative (which was the point of them really).

To be clear, I think normative statements are important, as you can’t have policy without them. However, I don’t know if university economics trains you on how to make appropriate value judgements (or I might of fallen asleep during those lessons 🙂 ).

I agree that representative samples are better than no evidence, in fact they are pretty damn good evidence. However, I think the best applied economists (that is what I will call economists who make normative statements) will spend most of their time talking to industry experts and looking at surverys, and then try to extract relevant pieces of information from this information.

The economist that creates the objective model and the economist that makes normative statements about the economy should be separate people. I think it is to much to ask of one person to fulfill the normative and the positive elements of formulating policy. That is why I love the idea of team based economics!

Just to be clear, I don’t hate normative economics, I think that normative economics is very important. However, I think normative economics requires very different skills than positive economics, and when I write things like this I just want to make that distinction clear.

I’m also quite impressed that you managed to turn an article about agriculture into a rebuke of economists for their sloppy normative thinking (that still gets them that tenure-track position they’re after). I think this could be the running joke of the blog: how can Matt bring everything back to an argument about the merits of normative economics 😉