Having spent more time than I’d like to recall in rooms with economists, political scientists, and law professors of various stripes and names, this Marginal Revolution post really formalized many of my feelings about current academic research agendae. That said, the critiques are all "in-the-box" and fairly benign relative to something like "your building-block models of human decision-making are practically useless in a large number of incredibly important contexts." Here’s the summary from Arnold Kling, but make sure to read the full list of blindspots for both liberal and conservative economists.
Tyler Cowen makes up long lists of the blind spots of left-leaning economists and right-leaning economists. If I were asked this question, I would boil my answers down to one suggestion for each.
What I think left-leaning economists should do more:
Look for structural reasons for policy failure, rather than attribute it always to misguided ideology. Consider the implications of imperfect knowledge on the part of government actors. Also, consider that the existence and growth of special interests is at least partly endogenous with respect to policy.
What I wish that right-leaning economists would do more:
Look for structural explanations for the growth of the state, rather than attribute it always to misguided ideology. Consider the implications of urban density. Consider that as the economy becomes more complex, the potential dispersion in wealth due to differences in ability, information, and luck becomes very large, while the ability to overcome such differences with sheer effort probably declines.
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