The old joke is that if you put all the world’s economists end to end they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion. That’s another way of saying that economists routinely disagree with each other—often completely. Nonetheless, much of the public and many journalists treat a recommendation from a group of economists like the word from Mt. Sinai—as long as they agree with it. That kind of response was widespread when, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported, a group of economists … [Read more...]