Checking the Czechs: Consensus and Dissention Among Czech Economists

Dan Šťastný

Prague Economic Papers, 2011, vol. 2011, issue 4, 366-380

Abstract: Traditional consensus surveys among economists seem to suffer from two shortcomings. First, they target the consensus issue in a way that tends to underestimate the agreement among economists, and second, they fail to offer information about how much economists' agreed - upon position matches the actual policy, which is what, ultimately, most economists care for most. In this paper, I introduce a redesigned survey that attempts to remedy both shortcomings at once by asking about preferred direction of policy changes in selected areas. Based on data from such survey undertaken among economists in the Czech Republic, I specifically ask about 1) the degree of consensus, and 2) the existence of a gap between such consensus and actual policy. The analysis of the survey data lends support to notions that 1) there is a solid, though not universally convincing consensus (regarding policy changes), 2) there is a gap in most areas of policy between what economists see as desirable and what the policy/makers practice.

Keywords: economic policy; consensus survey; transfer of knowledge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 A14 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.405

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