US Economic Experts Panel

The Clark Center for Global Markets explores economists’ views on vital policy issues via our US and European Economic Experts Panels. We regularly poll over 80 economists on a range of timely and relevant topics. Panelists not only have the opportunity to respond to a poll’s statements, but an opportunity to comment and provide additional resources, if they wish. The Clark Center then shares the results with the public in a straightforward and concise format.

Please note that from September 2022, the language in our polls will use just two modifiers to refer to the size of an effect:

‘Substantial’: when an effect is large enough that it would make a difference that matters for the behavior involved.
‘Measurable’: when the direction of the effect is clear, but perhaps experts would differ as to whether it is substantial.

Currency Manipulation

Question A:

Economic analysis can identify whether countries are using their exchange rates to benefit their own people at the expense of their trading partners’ welfare.

Responses

Source: Clark Center Economic Experts Panel
Methodology

Question B:

Bank of Japan monetary policies that result in a weaker yen make Americans generally worse off.

Responses

Source: Clark Center Economic Experts Panel
Methodology

Clark Center Economic Experts Panel

June 16, 2015

Nash Equilibrium

Behavior in many complex and seemingly intractable strategic settings can be understood more clearly by working out what each party in the game will choose to do if they realize that the other parties will be solving the same problem. This insight has helped us understand behavior as diverse as military conflicts, price setting by competing firms and penalty kicking in soccer.

Responses

Source: Clark Center Economic Experts Panel
Methodology

Clark Center Economic Experts Panel

June 2, 2015

US Median Income

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

The 9% cumulative increase in real US median household income since 1980 substantially understates how much better off people in the median American household are now economically, compared with 35 years ago.

Clark Center Economic Experts Panel

May 12, 2015

California’s Drought

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

Californians would be better off on average if all final users in the state paid the same price for water — adjusted for quality, place and time — even if, as a result, some food prices rose sharply and some farms failed.

Business Cycles, Recessions, & Crises

April 21, 2015

Raising Interest Rates

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

The Fed should wait until its preferred measure of inflation (Core PCE) is clearly rising — and not just forecast to rise — before it begins hiking interest rates.

Clark Center Economic Experts Panel

April 7, 2015

Local Tax Incentives

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Giving tax incentives to specific firms to locate operations in a city or state typically generates local benefits that outweigh the costs to the city and/or state providing the incentives.

B) The US as a whole benefits when cities or states compete with each other by giving tax incentives to firms to locate operations in their jurisdictions.

Clark Center Economic Experts Panel

March 24, 2015

Vaccines

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

A) Declining to be vaccinated against contagious diseases such as measles imposes costs on other people, which is a negative externality.

B) Considering the costs of restricting free choice, and the share of people in the US who choose not to vaccinate their children for measles, the social benefit of mandating measles vaccines for all Americans (except those with compelling medical reasons) would exceed the social cost.

Clark Center Economic Experts Panel

March 10, 2015

Greece

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

In 10 years, per capita purchasing power in Greece will be higher if — rather than continuing to service its debts over the next decade and complying with the budget rules currently in place — it refuses to accept a continuation of its current troika program and explicitly defaults on its debt held by the official sector.

Business Cycles, Recessions, & Crises

February 24, 2015

Dynamic Scoring

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Changing federal income tax rates, or the income bases to which those rates apply, can affect federal tax revenues partly by altering people’s behavior, and thus their actual or reported incomes.

B) To the extent that a given tax change might affect revenues partly by affecting national-income growth, existing research provides enough guidance to generate informative bounds on the size of any growth-driven revenue effect.

C) For large proposed changes in tax rates or the tax base, official revenue forecasts provided to Congress would probably be more accurate if the CBO and JCT tried to estimate fully how the proposed tax changes would affect growth-driven revenue.

Clark Center Economic Experts Panel

February 10, 2015

Textbook Prices

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Most college professors who assign textbooks would not be able to guess, within 10% of the actual figure, the retail price that their students pay for new copies of those books.

B) Since students can resell college textbooks or rent electronic versions, the net burden on students is substantially lower than retail prices for new textbook purchases would suggest.

C) Even though the professors who select textbooks are different form the people who pay for them, the price of new edition college textbooks reflect classic forces of supply and demand.

Clark Center Economic Experts Panel

January 27, 2015