'The Knowledge Transmission Mechanism'

Ha, visiting Belize during the rainy season may not have been the best idea I ever had. It's pouring rain, thunder, lightening, all tours are canceled, internet, phone, and TV are out (at least we have electricity now), and the roads (mostly dirt/gravel) are horrid. So instead of taking my mind off of things, nothing to do but sit in my room and think.

So I called a cab, went to the BTL (phone) store, got a sim chip, many gigs of data, and finally connected to the outside world once again.

This is supposed to continue for several more days and I want to preserve my data -- so, quickly, from Simon Wren-Lewis:

The Knowledge Transmission Mechanism: In a comment on my last post, Joseph Grossman asks “If the vast majority grasp and support the basic shape of the [fiscal] stimulus solution, and if we live in democracies, isn't it time to shift the analysis to expose the exact and precise mechanisms by which our electoral systems are failing miserably?” This is the question which, since 2010, I have asked myself almost every day. The question becomes even more relevant as the intellectual case for austerity crumbles, but the policy continues, and in some cases even appears to gain ground. ... I want to use this example to look at the question of the transmission of economic ideas more generally. So let’s break the question down.

First, do the vast majority of economists agree? In the case of fiscal policy, I think the honest answer here is: majority, probably yes, vast, almost certainly no. ...

However, what the majority - vast or not - of economists think would be irrelevant if no one listened to them. The transmission mechanism from economists to economic policy works along many channels. It may be direct. It may be mediated through the civil service. It may work through economists influencing popular opinion, which then influences policymakers. I think the last of these is the least important. ...

After a discussion of some of the problems in the transmission of ideas to policymakers, he Simon Wren-Lewis concludes:

My own current view is that these structural weaknesses are to a large extent inherent in liberal democratic societies, where restrictions on what money can do are very limited. That has led me to be much more favourably disposed to the delegation of economic decisions, even though this appears less democratic, and can be seen as representing arrogance and self-interest by the academic community. Yet the problem is real enough. And it is personal: when you study, teach and research in a subject where some of its most basic findings - understood for more than half a century- can be brushed aside so easily, and millions of people are worse off as a result, you have to ask yourself what the point is.