The Myth of The Rational Voter - Survey of Americans and Economists On The Economy

Survey of Americans and Economists On The Economy

The author pays special attention to the 1996 Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy (SAEE), created by the Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University Survey Project. The SAEE asked 1,510 random members of the American public and 250 people with PhDs in economics the same questions concerning the economy. In addition to its 37 topical questions, the SAEE also inquired about the participants income, income growth, education, and other demographic information.

The answers to the questions are often different: the public often blames technology, outsourcing, high corporate profits, and downsizing as reasons for why growth isn’t as high as it could be. Economists, on the other hand, barely pay any heed to such arguments. Some 74% of the public blame greedy oil companies for high gas prices while only 11% of economists do. The public tends to believe real incomes are decreasing while economists take the opposite stance.

Caplan notes that the chasm between economists and the general public might arguably be due to bias on the expert’s part. Self-serving bias (economists are rich and so they believe whatever benefits them) and ideological bias (economists are a bunch of right-wing ideologues) are two challenges the author addresses. Caplan writes: "Both the self-serving bias and the ideological bias are, in principle, empirically testable. Economists’ views are the product of their affluence? Then rich economists and rich noneconomists should agree. Economists are blinded by conservative ideology? Then conservative economists and conservative noneconomists should agree." In turn, if self-serving bias is unavoidable, it would likewise skew the perceptions of the non-wealthy, causing them to believe both the " 'ought' claim" that government should reduce inequality of wealth and the " 'is' claims" that existing inequalities of outcome are severe and are perpetuated by corporate and governmental power structures.

Using data from the SAEE (which includes measures for ideology, income, job security, and other measures), Caplan simulates what people would believe if they had the same circumstances as economists—a technique often used in political science called “enlightened preferences”. If the ideological and self-serving biases are true, most of the difference between the “enlightened public” and economists should disappear. If, however, the enlightened public is not much closer to economists, then something else is going on, as those explanations have been neutralized. Caplan believes that that something else is the biases he enumerated earlier. The data tends to favor Caplan’s argument, with most (but not all) of the enlightened public closer to economists than to the public.