Who is an Economist?
Over the past several months I have noticed a fascinating phenomenon within the blockchain community; several long time industry insiders currently hold unfavorable views of “economists”.
Perhaps, this negative sentiment is due to this profession having been blamed for not foreseeing the 2008 financial crisis, which motivated the launch of Bitcoin and also might be because many nobel prize winners in economics, from Krugman to Stiglitz, have casted negative judgments towards cryptocurrencies.
On the other hand, it is difficult to go through a conference or forum without meeting a handful of people presenting themselves as “economists”, indicating some positive reputation associated with the profession: a peculiar conundrum.
More interestingly is the fact that these individuals, at least every single one that I have met or have read about, have a wide variety of “qualifying” credentials; from economics undergraduate degrees to others lacking any formal education in economics at all.
I do not have a PhD in economics, but I lead a team of experts that do. Despite holding an undergraduate degree in economics, you’ll never hear me present myself or my thoughts as those of an economist — that is assuming I don’t veer off and complete a six year PhD degree in this field any time soon.
My wife, on the other hand, received a PhD in economics from Harvard. I recently had the pleasure of meeting her former PhD supervisor, a Nobel Prize winner, and, undeniably, an economist.
I asked him a question that I have been asked by many of our clients: “Who is an economist?”
In some specialized professions, there is a simple certified distinction between who is an actual professional and expert and those simply claiming to be. My father-in-law is a surgeon. He has a degree in surgery from an accredited medical school, a license to practice surgery, and over thirty years of practice. He holds tangible paperwork which proves that he is a surgeon; without which he would have never been allowed into an operating room.
Similarly, it’s clear to identify who is a lawyer and who is not. If you have completed your JD or LLM and are a member of a bar association, you are lawyer. If you have not, then you are not.
Coming back to the “economist” question.
The answer I received from my wife’s supervisor was straightforward and concise; a format you come to expect when speaking with economists.
He said, “it used to be, decades ago, that you could become an economist without a PhD in economics. That is no longer the case.”
The reasoning behind the answer, which is what most economists would use as a litmus test for anyone defining themselves as one of their own, is that economic sciences have become increasingly specialized over the last 150 years and without a PhD in economics it is not possible to achieve the level of understanding of the field necessary to make any progress in its development going forward.
As a PhD candidate in economics, you spend six years studying a school of thought that becomes how you engage with the world. You don’t get that from reading books, you get that from taking course after course, having these concepts explained to you by leaders in this field and doing independent research that those people guide you and poke holes in until you get it right.
