The People and the Experts: Alternative Views on Economic Affairs

William Nordhaus () and Douglas Rivers ()
Additional contact information
William Nordhaus: Cowles Foundation, Yale University, https://cowles.yale.edu/people/william-nordhaus
Douglas Rivers: Stanford University, https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/people/douglas-rivers

No 2361, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: Are speculators driving up oil prices? Should we raise energy prices to slow global warming? The present study takes a small number of such questions and compares the views of economic experts with those of the public. This comparison uses a panel of 2000+ respondents from YouGov with the views of the panel of experts from the IGM at the Chicago Booth School. We found that most of the US population is at best modestly informed about major economic questions and policies. The low level of knowledge is generally associated with he intrusion of ideological, political, and religious views that challenge or deny the current economic consensus. The intruding factors are highly heterogeneous and are much more diverse than the narrowness of public political discourse would suggest. Many of these findings have been established for scientific subjects, but they appear to be equally important for economic views.

Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des, nep-ene and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2023-05/d2361.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2361

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Cowles Foundation, Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA
The price is None.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Brittany Ladd ().