It's easy to be a conservative "economist"

Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial board refers to the "economist Michael Darda." Typically, the phrase "economist" means someone with a Ph.D. (or at least a master's degree) in economics, but it turns out that Darda's academic credentials consist of a degree in economics, journalism and public relations from the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater.

Similarly, the conservative pundit Stephen Moore once suggested "Brian Wesbury of Chicago, Richard Vedder of Ohio University, and David Malpass of Bear Stearns" for chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, failing to mention that Wesbury was chief economist of an investment bank in Chicago, not an economist at the University of Chicago as his phrasing suggested. Wesbury, too, lacks a Ph.D. (he has a BA in economics and an MBA).

One other example -- despite having only an undergraduate degree in economics, the actor, game show host, and conservative pundit Ben Stein describes himself as "an economist" and even attacked the qualifications of Princeton economist Paul Krugman:

Last year, after [Krugman] published an encomium to the late economist James Tobin, he received a bizarre screed from actor and game-show host Ben Stein; Stein, who majored in economics in college, accused Krugman, a likely future Nobel laureate, of having a "limited background" in the field.

This is all ridiculous credential inflation. Majoring in sociology doesn't make you a sociologist, and majoring in economics doesn't make you an economist.

Comments

[Voodoo]

And majoring in political science doesn't qualify you to judge whether someone is a good economist or not.

[Tritone]

Well, you can still be musician without majoring in music, right?

Oh, good, I was about to throw away all my CDs.

[Lettuce]

Mischael Darda may not be an "economist", and I don't refer to myself as one since my degree is an undergraduate degree as well...

But the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater isn't a joke and I don't see why it had to be pointed out where he got his degree from, since the point is the degree, not the place it was conferred.

(And, no, I didn't attend the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater. I attended the University of Wisconsin - Madison and the Universoty of Wisconsin - MIlwaukee.)

[voodoo]

The more I look at this post the more arrogant I think you are. Do you really think only Ph.D.'s have a right to speak on any issue? Did Thomas Edison have a Ph.D.? I assume since he didn't you would have suggested that anyone who listened to him was foolish. You got personal with Darda's school, but you failed to mention that Wesbury's MBA was from Kellogg. Was that on purpose - because its ranked above Fuqua? There are many Ph.D.s, and quite a few Nobel prize winners who would agree with Darda and Wesbury. How do you deal with that?

[Brendan Nyhan]

Saying "Do you really think only Ph.D.'s have a right to speak on any issue?" is an absurd misrepresentation of my views. For one thing, it wouldn't make any sense. I don't have my Ph.D. yet, and I wrote for Spinsanity from 2001-2004 and on this blog from 2004-now. More importantly, it's wrong. Of course people can speak about issues. But it's misleading to call someone an "economist" when they have an undergraduate degree because the label implies that they have a Ph.D. That's the extent of the argument.

[tof]

Go UW system Go!

but i digress.

BN,

i'd suggest that credentialling (to make a verb of it) is a little more complicated than you are suggesting. for one, i know many investment banks title people economists or even chief economists who do not have a phd. i know one fairly prominent public interest advocate who once held such a post based on a masters in public policy or administration.

furthermore, you yourself know people who have received phd's in say economics who are regulalry called political scientists. or even phds in business schools and called political scientists.

you even know a fairly prominent scholar who get called an economist who never received a phd or even, ahem, a d.phil.

so let me suggest a broader credentialing mechanism than academia. investment banks can clearly credential someone. newspapers can credential someone, etc. and universities can even credetial someone in more ways than awarding a degree.

now if the new york times wants to call ben stein an economist that's fine. we might question their judgement, but it's a choice they seem to have made. for some purposes we might want to rely on the university-standard, but their are other ways to master a field than to go to graduate school and clearly people can contribute to a field (the gold standard of scholarship) without a specialized degree. particularly in the social sciences.

so that's a long way of getting back to Darda. has he ever published something that was peer-reviewed?