Questions about economists' favourite economists
Davis, Figgins, Hedengren and Klein have put together an interesting survey of American economics professors - asking about their favourite economists, alive and dead, and about the journals and blogs they read. I downloaded the data behind the paper in the vain hope that this blog might be among the long tail of responses not reported in the main paper (it wasn't). But the data does provide lots to think about. An intriguing point (from a survey design point of view, at least) is raised by one of the questions. The survey asked people to choose their most respected/admired economists from two groups: over 60 years old and under 60. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I'd know the age of many of the economists I admire. I speculate that the respondents might have subconsciously chosen economists who are much older, or much younger, than 60 years of age, in order to answer these questions with greater certainty. Even if aware of this potential bias, I might ...