The art of following the science

In recent years, western democracies have experienced a damaging erosion of faith in scientific expertise. While online conspiracy theories and the alternative facts promoted by charismatic demagogues are partly responsible, some blame attaches to the naïve way in which governments apply scientific data to policy questions, writes Richard Bronk. Science can neither substitute for political choices between competing goals nor replace the need for nuanced judgment of the multifaceted nature of specific problems

Let young people move: why any post-Brexit migration deal must safeguard youth mobility

Restrictions on free movement are likely to be an important aspect of the UK’s new relationship with EU countries post-Brexit. Richard Bronk argues that safeguarding youth mobility should be a major principle behind any immigration reforms. He explores the economic, political and social case for preserving it, before suggesting some ways to do so – based in part on existing provisions for youth mobility with certain Commonwealth and other non-EU allies

Letter to MPs from a Remain voter: a plea for realism, tolerance and honesty

This is the text of a letter written by Richard Bronk, a Visiting Fellow at the European Institute of the London School of Economics, to two Conservative MPs, one a friend, with whom he was in correspondence. The letter (which has been anonymised) was written to foster a better understanding of how many of the 48% who voted Remain are thinking and feeling following the vote – and thereby contribute to efforts to bridge the dangerous chasm opening up between most of the UK’s great cities, universities and the young, on the one hand, and the new Brexit government on the other

Book review: cents and sensibility: what economics can learn from the humanities

Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro trace the connection between Adam Smith's great classic, The Wealth of Nations, and his less celebrated book on The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and contend that a few decades later Jane Austen invented her groundbreaking method of novelistic narration in order to give life to the empathy that Smith believed essential to humanity. Cents and Sensibility demonstrates the benefits of a freewheeling dialogue between economics and the humanities by addressing a wide range of problems drawn from the economics of higher education, the economics of the family, and the development of poor nations

Might economists be partly to blame for Trump and moves towards a ‘full British Brexit’?

The reasons for the Trump phenomenon and Brexit vote are many and various, but have we overlooked ways in which standard economics, by failing to take seriously the radical uncertainty endemic in modern political economies, has contributed to the populist turn? Richard Bronk argues that by mischaracterising their profession as able to make precise forecasts of uncertain futures – an impossible task – economists contributed to the current denigration of experts. More importantly, by assuming that people form rational expectations, they encouraged us to ignore the transformative power of simple narratives

Uncertainty and the dangers of monocultures in regulation, analysis, and practice

Uncertainty is endemic to innovative economies and complex societies, but policymakers underestimate how damaging this is for many of their guiding assumptions. In particular, the discourse of best practice, “global solutions for global problems,” and regulatory harmonization becomes questionable when there is substantial uncertainty about the future. This uncertainty makes it impossible to know what best practice will be and increases the danger that harmonization will result in highly correlated errors and shared analytical blind spots. The transnational harmonization of regulation has well-known advantages, but – especially in technocratic policy areas – also creates vulnerability to unexpected challenges by constraining how we think as well as homogenizing how we act. Faced with uncertainty, policymakers should be wary of monocultures in regulation, analysis, and practice, and instead focus on managing policy diversity to limit its costs. This paper’s theoretical argument is grounded in philosophy, the history of ideas, and even biology. However, we also present empirical examples and consider some implications for political theory

Uncertain futures: imaginaries, narratives and calculative technologies

Dynamic capitalist economies are characterised by relentless innovation and novelty and hence exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. How then do economic actors form expectations and decide how to act despite this uncertainty? This paper focuses on the role played by imaginaries, narratives, and calculative technologies, and argues that the market impact of shared calculation devices, social narratives, and contingent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of ‘narrative economics’ and a theory of fictional (rather than rational) expectations. When expectations cannot be anchored in objective probability functions, the future belongs to those with the market, political, or rhetorical power to make their models or stories count. The paper also explores the dangers of analytical monocultures and the discourse of best practice in conditions of uncertainty, and considers the link between uncertainty and some aspects of populism

The epistemics of populism and the politics of uncertainty

This paper discusses epistemic aspects of populism – especially its link with radical uncertainty and the tribal construction of facts – that have so far received relatively little attention. We argue that populism is less a backward-looking phenomenon feeding off existing grievances than a narrative-based reaction to an increasingly unsettled future. Many economic factors isolated as causes of populism – especially rapid technological innovation, deregulation, and the globalisation of networks – entail a high degree of indeterminacy in social systems; and the corresponding uncertainty facing voters is a catalyst for many of the pathologies of populism isolated in the literature. In particular, uncertainty undermines the credibility of experts, while the disorientation and anxiety it induces increase reliance on simple narratives to structure expectations. The paper explores the role of narrative entrepreneurs, the relationship between narratives and power, and the dynamics of narrative coups designed to create alternative facts and perform a new reality

Uncertain futures and the politics of uncertainty

Since writing The Romantic Economist – Imagination in Economics (2009) I have been fascinated by the link between the human capacity to imagine new futures and the prevalence of uncertainty. Imagination is both the ultimate cause of much of the uncertainty we face and our best tool for coping with it

The New Zealand Kauri (Agathis Australis) Research Project: A Radiocarbon Dating Intercomparison of Younger Dryas Wood and Implications for IntCal13

We describe here the New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) Younger Dryas (YD) research project, which aims to undertake Δ14C analysis of ~140 decadal floating wood samples spanning the time interval ~13.1–11.7 kyr cal BP. We report 14C intercomparison measurements being undertaken by the carbon dating laboratories at University of Waikato (Wk), University of California at Irvine (UCI), and University of Oxford (OxA). The Wk, UCI, and OxA laboratories show very good agreement with an interlaboratory comparison of 12 successive decadal kauri samples (average offsets from consensus values of –7 to +4 14C yr). A University of Waikato/University of Heidelberg (HD) intercomparison involving measurement of the YD-age Swiss larch tree Ollon505, shows a HD/Wk offset of ~10–20 14C yr (HD younger), and strong evidence that the positioning of the Ollon505 series is incorrect, with a recommendation that the 14C analyses be removed from the IntCal calibration database