Students recently had the unique opportunity to hear a panel composed of a Nobel laureate, top UChicago economists, and the president of the Obama Foundation as they discussed the question, "Can Economics Save the World?"

As recent Nobel Prize winner and economics professor Abhijit Banerjee introduced his new book, Good Economics for Hard Times, he joked, “Economists do not usually write books—least of all books that human beings can read.” Perhaps to this point, he pointed to the growing public distrust in economists in recent surveys.

The panel discussion that followed centered around making data accessible without losing nuance. Dean and Emmett Dedmon Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Katherine Baicker said that in order to implement policies based on economic findings, “We have to sacrifice some of the careful work that we’ve slaved over and some of the subtlety for which our colleagues reward us. And that’s a choice not everyone wants to make.

“But if you want someone to be able to act on your findings, you have to make them not only usable in a time when someone can use them,  but you have to give up on the second, third, fourth order points to convey the one thing that might actually result in change.”

Wally Adeyemo, newly appointed president of the Obama Foundation, who previously served in senior positions with the U.S. Treasury Department and the White House National Economic Council in the Obama administration, said the problems policymakers often grapple with are not viewed through an economic lens by the public. “The reality is that you work in a world that is complicated by several other things that require the views of other academic fields.”

Baicker also noted that less technical audiences sometimes find the language of economics cold and disconnected from individual reality. With public trust in experts and academics generally decreasing, she asked, how can economists be "unbiased purveyors of truth," stating only the facts, without leaving out key issues like human dignity?  

 “I’ve been around economists for 30 years,” replied Steve Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics and William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word dignity used or appear in an economic context. And I welcome it.”

Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Professor of Economics and Director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, noted that economists might subtly allude to human dignity in economic models, “But we don’t ever talk about it that way publicly. Why is that?”

You can read the full article and view a video of the event here.

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