Not so Dismal a Science
Addressing public issues in ways many policymakers do not

Every Sunday coaches in the National Football League must make high-stakes decisions under intense public scrutiny. What, for example, should a team do when faced with a particular fourth-down situation? A bad choice could end a season, even a coaching career. David Romer, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, thinks he can help. To be sure, there are more pressing economic issues facing the world—Romer himself writes extensively on monetary policy—but in a paper entitled “It’s Fourth Down and What Does the Bellman Equation Say?” Romer has come to the rescue of the oft-besieged head coach. Be aggressive, Romer counsels. Where, Red Sox fans cry out, was baseball’s equivalent to David Romer when Grady Little most needed him?

In late September, just as the energy accompanying the opening of school begins to dissipate, I give students in my economics class a New York Times article about David Romer’s analysis. I use this short piece in part to change pace, to start a discussion that can at once be academic and anything but academic. My deeper purpose, though, is to ensure that studying the dismal science does not seem so dismal. My experience teaching economics at Milton has shown me that it doesn’t have to be. Economics students, even those who will not pursue further study in the field, can grow intellectually in ways that permit them to be engaged, critical participants in public life.

As Romer’s work suggests, many economists seem increasingly eager to apply their skills and understanding to issues that seem far from the realm of gross domestic product figures and the latest NASDAQ numbers. Cruise through the list of working papers at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and you can find titles like “Catholic Schools and Bad Behavior,” “Choosing between War and Peace,” and “Carrots, Sticks and Broken Windows.” The authors of these studies are not engaged in some quest to capture someone else’s academic turf. Rather, they are addressing important public issues in ways that many policymakers do not. Although Milton students are not typically ready for the more complex quantitative analysis that characterizes professional work, they too can begin applying fundamental economic concepts to seemingly non-economic issues. For example, the basic notion of opportunity cost, an idea covered in the first few weeks of the course, comes as a near revelation to many students. In much the same way, the essential elements of the supply-anddemand model open some students’ eyes to a new way of thinking. With just those ideas in mind, they can read Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker’s analysis of drug legalization and engage in vociferous and intellectually vibrant debate over the nation’s drug policy. Or they can begin conceptualizing the ways in which we can reform the organ transplant system. Should we pay people to donate organs? Should we reward needy patients who have lived healthy lives?

Milton students recognize that economists alone can’t tell us whether to legalize marijuana or to pay for a particular kidney transplant—we need the help of political theorists, philosophers, perhaps even theologians to resolve vexing social problems. It is therefore beneficial that Milton’s economics courses are part of the history and social sciences department’s broader examination of the human experience. Still, the economist can provide new insights and fresh evidence that is useful to all of us as we make individual and collective decisions. Sunny Ladd’s work, for example, may not provide the very last word on education reform, but we ignore her work and work like it at our own peril. The point is not to elevate the work or tools of economists above all else, but rather to expand the intellectual repertoire of students. We say that we want students to ask tough questions; an introduction to economics helps them to do just that.

We would prefer, of course, that students could answer some questions as well. In accomplishing this goal, an introductory economics course is only partially successful. A few core principles provide the basis for most good answers, but the complexity and interdependence that characterize the global economy can at times make simple answers elusive. I often suggest, only partially in jest, that there are always two possible answers to any economic question: “opportunity cost” and “it depends.” (When pressed I sometimes add a third—“I don’t know”—but I have great difficulty finding professional economists who have made a career by admitting as much in print.) Part of the trouble lies in human behavior. Economic models often rest on assumptions about how people will behave, and certain folks just don’t meet the models’ expectations. It’s no surprise that behavioral economists and professors of psychology now push the field forward, and each year Milton students engage in a series of exercises designed to test assumptions underlying game theory. In an effort to introduce some new interdisciplinary approaches, several years ago I collaborated with my colleague Ellie Griffin, teacher of Milton’s Advanced Placement Pyschology course, to develop material appropriate for both economics and psychology students. For most economics students, though, it’s not the mystery of human nature but the mystery of public discourse that can be most confusing.

Take the terminology of macroeconomics. Most of us bemoan high levels of unemployment. But what does it take to be unemployed in the government’s eyes? And once we know what the standards are for being “unemployed,” what does the “unemployment rate” tell us? I typically give students a series of articles about the calculation of the unemployment rate, including Austan Goolsbee’s article “The Unemployment Myth” in which he contends that “the government has cooked the books” by reclassifying some unemployed people as disabled. Students read similar pieces when we examine the terms “growth,” “inflation” and “poverty.” The meaning of an apparently simple statistic is not always simple, Its significance is not always straightforward. The selective, deceptive usage of numbers in public debate only confuses matters further. Thus, students find that simply describing current conditions in a single nation can be rather challenging.

Moving beyond description adds complexity. World-renowned economists argue bitterly about the causes and consequences of certain economic phenomena, and their disputes over recommended policy are no less passionate. Such differences could discourage the budding student of economics, but most Milton students seem to avoid disillusionment. Rather, they begin to ask difficult questions about the causes of the disagreements. Are some economists blinded by ideological commitments? Are some economists making unreasonable assumptions? Do all economists give credence to the same body of evidence? Here, of course, Milton students are playing to their strength, once again asking questions. With the experts in disagreement, though, students (and teachers) must ask those questions with a healthy degree of humility. Understanding the world, never mind recasting it, is pretty hard work.

Indeed, despite the limits inherent in a brief introduction to economic thinking, my commitment to teaching this material has only increased. Milton at its best instills in its students a desire to engage with rather than retreat from the world beyond. No shortage of challenges—or to put it in a more positive way, no shortage of opportunities—greet Milton students as they look to the future. And though it is commonplace to advance the specious claim that forces beyond our control dictate our fate now and forever, most of the economics students that I teach leave the course energized, not enervated. They know that decisions about taxing and spending matter, and they can articulate why. They know that decisions to embrace and restrain market forces matter, and they can articulate why. They know that decisions about international trade matter, and they can articulate why. (They also know that according to one recent study, children raised in neater houses are likely to enjoy higher earnings. Not a crucial bit of knowledge for them, but parents take note!) These students know that they—and we—can make better choices. With that knowledge, and with a whole host of good questions, the future filmmakers, the future investment bankers, and—especially—the future football coaches who graduate from Milton are a bit better prepared to take seriously the responsibilities of citizenship.

David Ball
History and Social Sciences Department

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