It’s Official — Economists Think Stern’s Nuts

In this month's issue of the Economists' Voice, Robert Whaples, chair of the economics department at Wake Forest, reports on a survey he recently conducted in which he sent questionnaires to 210 Ph.D. economists randomly selected from the American Economic Association.  His charge: to find out how much disagreement there is within the profession and a number of high profile public policy issues.

What did his respondents have to say about the impact that global warming will have on the economy? 

• 19.6% agreed with the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, that is, that U.S. GDP per capita would be reduced by 5% or more by the end of the 21st century if the world did nothing to address industrial greenhouse gas emissions;
• 35.7% believed that warming would reduce U.S. GDP by less than 1% and may even increase it up to 1%!;
• 21.4% agreed with Yale economist William Nordhaus in that U.S. GDP losses would be somewhere between 1-5%;
• 16.1% believed that U.S. GDP would increase by 1-5% as a consequence of warming; and
• 7.1% though U.S. GDP would increase by more than 5% because of warming!

In short, the number of economists who thought global warming would improve the U.S. economy outnumbered the number of economists who thought that global warming would harm the economy to the extent feared by the Stern Review.

Will those who demand that we bow down to the consensus of scientific opinion likewise demand the same regarding the consensus of economic opinion?  Not bloody likely.