The Economist as Scientist, Engineer or Plumber?

Huei-Chun Su, David Colander and Jhet Assistant

No c98mu, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Some well-known economists suggest that a good economist should act like an engineer, a surgeon, a dentist, or even a plumber. These metaphors are useful in helping economists reflect the nature of economics and their role in society. But which is the most sensible one? This paper argues that economists should be playing all these roles and more, because economics is not a single entity, and each entity has separate goals, methods, and boundaries. To take this multiplicity of roles into account this paper argues that in addition to the traditional boundary that delineates the disciplinary domain of economics against other sciences, an overarching boundary between economic science and applied policy needs to be recognized. It then examines Duflo’s economist as plumber metaphor and suggests that a better metaphor for Duflo’s purpose would be “general contractor”, a metaphor that, if accepted, would suggest radical change in training applied policy economists.

Date: 2021-02-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-hpe, nep-pke and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: THE ECONOMIST AS SCIENTIST, ENGINEER, OR PLUMBER? (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:osfxxx:c98mu

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/c98mu

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