The Economist as Plumber
Name
aer.p20171153.pdf
Size
666.36 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4f1ec18d4898d8f41c2e219b634afaa9
Author(s)
Duflo, Esther
Date Issued
May 2017
Journal
American Economic Review
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Duflo, Esther. “The Economist as Plumber.” American Economic Review 107, no. 5 (May 2017): 1–26. 2018 © American Economic Association
Version
Final published version
Abstract
As economists increasingly help governments design new policies and regulations, they take on an added responsibility to engage with the details of policy making and, in doing so, to adopt the mindset of a plumber. Plumbers try to predict as well as possible what may work in the real world, mindful that tinkering and adjusting will be necessary since our models gives us very little theoretical guidance on what (and how) details will matter. This essay argues that economists should seriously engage with plumbing, in the interest of both society and our discipline.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/AER.P20171153
