Ideology and Dissent among Economists: The Joint Economic Forecast of German Economic Research Institutes

Ha Quyen Ngo (), Niklas Potrafke, Marina Riem and Christoph Schinke ()
Additional contact information
Ha Quyen Ngo: ifo Center for Public Finance and Political Economy

Eastern Economic Journal, 2018, vol. 44, issue 1, No 9, 135-152

Abstract: Abstract Economists, and also economic research institutes, differ in their attitudes toward desirability of economic policies. The policy positions taken can often be determined by ideology. We examine economic policy positions by investigating minority votes in the Joint Economic Forecast of German economic research institutes. The data set consists of voting behavior over the period 1950–2014. Our results show that the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) submitted by far the most minority votes, consistent with the popular impression that the DIW exhibits a preference for demand-oriented economic policy and has differed from other leading economic research institutes in this respect. For example, the rate of minority voting of the DIW corresponded to some 300 percent of the rate of minority voting of the RWI Essen. Minority votes display an economic research institute’s identity. When institutes are known to be associated with specific economic policy positions, politicians, clients, and voters well understand how to assess the bias in the policy advice that is given.

Keywords: decision making in committees; minority voting; policy preferences; ideology; Joint Economic Forecast of German economic research institutes; D72; I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/eej.2015.33 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Ideology and Dissent among Economists: The Joint Economic Forecast of German Economic Research Institutes (2015)
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:pal:easeco:v:44:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1057_eej.2015.33

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/41302

DOI: 10.1057/eej.2015.33

Access Statistics for this article

Eastern Economic Journal is currently edited by Allan Zebedee and Cynthia Bansak

More articles in Eastern Economic Journal from Palgrave Macmillan, Eastern Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().