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Andrew Yuengert Pepperdine University |
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Andrew Yuengert, Pepperdine University Summary Comments on Baylor Conference on Economics and Christianity Delivered 9 November 2002 My expectations for this conference were high, and they have been met. It should be noted that a conference of this size and scope on this topic would have been inconceivable as little as ten years ago. Baylor and Lilly have done a great service to the discipline. On the program, the purpose of this session is to respond to the conference. A common question among economists about a conference on economics and religion is : "What difference does it make? What should I do differently?" This is the crucial question: "What should I do now? What should we do now?" I want to address both. These questions seem simple, but they are surprisingly difficult for economists to answer coherently - indeed, for any person shaped by the modern culture - particularly in a world where Ann Landers thinks that wise advice about marriage consists of comparing the costs and benefits of the marriage vow. What are the barriers to our thinking clearly about what we should do now? The number one barrier is the idea that our economic models can help us make decisions. We think that we should try to decide what to do in the same way that homo economicus decides. This is a mistake: we should act like homo sapiens, not like homo economicus. To see the difference, ask yourself how homo economicus would think about what to do now? First, consult your preferences, which may have changed since the conference began. Do you now have a taste for explicitly Christian scholarship / radical service to the poor / Austrian economics / Post-Keynesian Institutionalism / certain research topics / that you did not have before? Second, have your incentives changed? Will Lilly fund more of this? Is this sort of work becoming more respectable at my institution? Will I still get tenure if I change my research? Do I have new information about research opportunities that I did not have before? What's wrong with this account? The most important thing that's wrong with it is not the description of your constraints - it's the description of your preferences as either fixed or changed by factors you cannot control. Such a description begs the question of whether your preferences are worth pursuing. Note that I am not quibbling about the use of this model as a predictive or explanatory device for other people's behavior, or as unsuitable for an economic model. That's not the issue before us. The question is: what should you do? Homo economicus is an unrealistic assumption, remember? People don't have to decide that way, remember? It just helps us to predict, remember? We are not predicting what we will do when we get home; We're deciding. We don't need explanations for our choices; we need reasons. And homo economicus doesn't give us reasons. What if your colleague comes up to you after the conference and says "I've observed certain character traits in you that are highly correlated with a change in preferences for Christian research after a conference like this. We predict you will become an explicitly Christian economist from here on out." Is this a reason to adopt an explicitly Christian perspective in your work? On the contrary, it's a reason to be suspicious of your motives and the independence of your judgment. You do not yet have a reason. Reasons are not preferences, and all scholars, not just Christian scholars, should have reasons for what they do. They are supposed to evaluate their goals and the means to achieve them. Thinking about your goals as an economist does not consist in discovering them lurking in some dark corner of your heart. It consists in thinking about what they should be, in light of the Gospel and your particular vocation and circumstances. The crucial question you need to ask yourself about your actions as a teacher and researcher is "Why?" Why are you doing what you're doing? Why the assumptions you've made? Why the regression you've run? Why the analysis? What ends does your work promote? Are they the right ends? Are you promoting them efficiently? This simple exercise is very low cost, and so even small gains in the value of your work will justify it. It may change you work little, but it may redirect it in valuable ways. Consider, for example, my own research into U.S. immigration. When I was in graduate school, labor economists were using regression analysis to measure the assimilation rates of U.S. immigrants (earnings growth relative to U.S. natives), by country of origin. The typical justification of this analysis is that it would help us to identify which immigrant groups adjust 'poorly' (that is, slowly) to the U.S. labor market, and which ones adjust 'well' (quickly). When asked why we (or a policymaker) should want to know which immigrants are doing well and which are doing poorly, the standard answer, implicit in most assimilation research, was that the information will help us to decide which immigrants should be allowed in (those who do well, presumably) and which to exclude (those who do poorly). Further questions ("why should we prefer those immigrants whose earnings grow quickly to others?") elicited a discussion of the benefits of immigration, of which natives benefit, and which suffer, and the relevant empirical measures of labor demand elasticities, etc. Several years after I completed my dissertation research, I was shocked to find that Catholic Social Teaching asserts that restrictions on immigrants in favor of "successful" immigrants are an unacceptable abridgment of the right of human beings to migrate. Policymakers should factor the interests of immigrants into their calculations. If a right to migrate, which limits the right of states to regulate the flow of people across their borders, is accepted, there may well be an effect on the research choices made further down the hierarchy. I wonder how my dissertation research might have changed if I had taken even one hour to reflect on the purpose of my research as a Catholic. With a different set of moral presuppositions, the research might have been subtly but significantly different. Instead of focusing on the identification of groups whose assimilation rates are low, my research would have attempted to explain why assimilation rates are so low, and what factors can make assimilation easier. The substance of the research might not have been much different, although it is possible that there might have been a modest redirection of research towards those factors (enclaves, language, education) that improve an immigrant group's typical assimilation profile. How is all of this related to what you should do? The answers to these why questions, and a greater understanding of what is humanly at stake in your work, does not depend only on you. You are going to have to become more philosophical, more theologically minded, more interdisciplinary, to understand what your labors as a research economist should be for. There are increasingly good resources out there in the discipline, but I will not promise that they are easy reading. It will take time, but your work will better serve your ends if you take the time to investigate. If you are currently publishing five papers a year, you may only get four out from now on. A word about the ends of your work - the shoulds. Don't despair of reasoned discussion about the nature of the good with your colleagues. It is difficult but not impossible. We've been trained that we can't argue about higher ends reasonably, and we've taken it even further, assuming that we cannot even reason with ourselves about ends. Remember, difficult does not mean impossible, or fruitless. I don't want to talk only about the question "what should I do?" The question "what should we do?" is at least as important. I was glad to hear that academics hunt in packs, and not that that they just run in packs. The word "hunt" implies that we have a goal as a discipline. What do we need to hunt better? I'm convinced that we need the resources to become more philosophically minded. We don't think clearly even about the choices we make as economists. - What is the good? - What is the difference between preferences and the good? - Is Mother Teresa self-interested? I've found that philosophers who share our love of things economic can be tremendously helpful. Of course, there is always the risk of being dragged into the squabbles of other disciplines when you seek their help, but some philosophers are actually interested in the questions of economists. I believe that any Christian university that is serious about the life of the mind will have strong philosophy and history departments. They should be a good resource for economists. What are some other institutional helps for this work? - conferences - institutes - journals (Journal of Markets and Morality, Review of Social Economy, Faith and Economics) - networks - mentor programs. We should make sure that new scholars have the resources and encouragement that those of us ten years older had to struggle to find. Finally: this is an exciting time to be an economist. The discipline is questioning itself, and is open to new insights about the nature of the human person and social life. We've seen in this conference that the economic model is very flexible. This may be the moment for research that incorporates Christian insight into human nature to have an impact in the field. |