Doris Geide-Stevenson

Consensus Among Economists: Revisited

Abstract The authors explore consensus among economists on specific propositions on the basis of a fall 2000 survey of American Economic Association members. Because some propositions are drawn from earlier studies, the results illustrate the dynamics of opinion within the profession. The authors generally find consensus within the profession, although the degree of consensus varies between propositions that are international, macroeconomic, and microeconomic in nature. Consensus is particularly strong for propositions of free international trade and capital flows. In contrast, macroeconomic propositions exhibit a lower degree of consensus, partly because of increased agreement with monetarist and supply-side propositions over time. The profession displays substantial skepticism concerning claims of the “New Economy.”

Social Security Policy and International Labor and Capital Mobility

This paper studies the connection between social security policy and international factor movements within a two-country overlapping-generations model with production. Incentives for factor movements emerge because one country relies on private savings while the other country operates a social security system. The pattern of migration depends on the steady-state capital-labor ratios compared with the Golden Rule capital-labor ratios. Incentives to migrate do not vanish in the long run and one country might empty out. Capital always moves to the social-security country. Without compensation neither labor nor capital mobility represents a Pareto improvement for the economy. Copyright 1998 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Consensus Among Economists—An Update

In this article, the authors explore consensus among economists on specific propositions based on a fall 2011 survey of American Economic Association members. Results are based on 568 responses and provide evidence of changes in opinion over time by including propositions from earlier studies in 2000 (Fuller and Geide-Stevenson 2003) and 1992 (Alston, Kearl, and Vaughan 1992). Propositions focus on microeconomics, macroeconomics, distributional and international topics, as well as pedagogy. Results indicate a movement toward an overall higher level of consensus, mainly because of a drop in the incidence of no consensus. Especially in the area of distributional propositions, economists display an increased concern with income inequality and potential effects on growth. In the area of macroeconomics, current opinions are more similar to those of the 1992 survey than the 2000 survey.

Experimental Estimates of Taxpayer Ethics

Abstract This paper extends the existing literature on taxpayer ethics in three ways. First, we construct a two-stage model of decision making, which allows us to disentangle risk preferences from ethical motivations for income tax compliance. Second, we develop a new experimental data set, which permits us to estimate the magnitudes of the relevant personality traits, risk aversion and morality, at the individual level. Third, we combine the experimental data with participant surveys so that ethical preferences are not only measured but also linked to demographic characteristics. We find that ethical preferences are correlated with risk aversion, age, gender, and marital status, among other characteristics.

International Capital Mobility in the Presence of Unemployment Insurance

The paper develops a general--equilibrium model with layoff unemployment to examine the effect of different unemployment insurance policies on international capital mobility. Conditions are derived under which capital will flow to the high--benefit country. Incentives for international capital movements are unaffected by how the burden of financing unemployment benefits is distributed between workers and firms. It is shown that capital outflows might have positive welfare effects for workers. This contrasts with results from standard models of international factor movements. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003