Yesterday I took part in an IdeaFactory session at the annual OECD Forum titled: ‘A Survivor’s Guide to a Post-Truth World’. The jury is out on whether experts (including economists) are going to be survivors, even after the session I think. As ever, though, it was fascinating, the discussion in our breakout group, really making me think above all about my personal actions: do I make enough of an effort to listen to people whose views I disagree with? or enough of an effort to overcome confirmation bias when I read things online? Another message I took away was to think about the relationship between online debate and face-to-face interaction, and the role of physical social and family networks. For example, if there are subjects on which we disagree with people close to us IRL that we can’t discuss, how on earth is that debate supposed to happen in any public forum?

Anyway, plenty of interesting books were mentioned. Matthew D’Ancona, one of three recent books called Post Truth (the others are by Evan Davis and by James Ball) was a speaker. (His point was that there’s nothing new about the production of lies but the consumption possibilities and behaviours have changed.) So was Brian Cathcart, co-author of Everybody’s Hacked Off (and once a colleague of mine), and philosopher Vincent Henricks, co-author of Infostorms. Other titles mentioned – ones I’d not heard of – were Joi Ito’s Whiplash and Joshua Cooper Ramo’s The Seventh Sense. Oh, and Durkheim came up in conversation. All round, plenty to think about.

[amazon_link asins=’1785036874,1408703319,1785902148′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’enlighteconom-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’133b9f50-4b79-11e7-990b-21620247f72d’]

[amazon_link asins=’331932764X’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’enlighteconom-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’338e023b-4b79-11e7-a721-b985d34f3aac’]

[amazon_link asins=’1455598399′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’enlighteconom-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’3dc0f0d8-4b79-11e7-af42-73357602563a’][amazon_link asins=’0316395056′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’enlighteconom-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’4bc7ca04-4b79-11e7-b71c-87334648333b’]

[amazon_link asins=’024196556X’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’enlighteconom-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’6f7f50e2-4b79-11e7-88a9-edb6bb8d4cda’][amazon_link asins=’0521097126′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’enlighteconom-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’d78a7234-4b79-11e7-8cd5-3dd6b148e151′]

I recently read a 2001 paper by the late, missed, Tony Atkinson, The Strange Disappearance of Welfare Economics. He wrote: “Despite the prevalence of welfare statements in modern economics, we are no long subjecting them to critical analysis.” And he’s right. Economics, macro and micro, is stuffed with statements about ‘optimality’. The article continues: “One cannot help noting the sharp contrast to [an] example used in a 1930s discussion of welfare criteria: the repeal of the Corn Laws, where conflicting interests are central to the analysis. A representative agent model would indeed have appeared extraordinary to classical economists.” One cannot help noting, either, that if (macro)economics had not disembowelled itself of the ability to focus on conflicts of interest, we as a discipline would have paid more attention to the consequences of globalisation and technical change since 1980. But that takes us into counterfactual history territory.

It’s with some smugness that I’ve read (in the recent past, not in my millennium ago student days) the three key books on welfare economics cited in Atkinson’s article: Will Baumol‘s Welfare Economics and the Theory of the State, J de V Graaff‘s Theoretical Welfare Economics and IMD Little’s A Critique of Welfare Economics. The Baumol is the most recent, updated in 1965. I got that from the library store, the Graaff second hand online and the Little was donated to me by Andrew Sentance, who said it was mouldering in his garage so I could have it.

Sixteen year’s after Atkinson’s article, it’s time for economists to look seriously at welfare economics again. It affects everything from environmental policy (discounting the future??) to macro (budget rules, optimal saving….) to national income accounts (my pet obsession – any aggregation has an implicit set of ethical assumptions).

[amazon_link asins=’B0000CMS1Q’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’enlighteconom-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’04295a49-4911-11e7-8c6a-019c36210731′]

[amazon_link asins=’0521094461′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’enlighteconom-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’0f807d27-4911-11e7-9539-bf3d71f71a1b’]

[amazon_link asins=’B006MYUM88′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’enlighteconom-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’1e5fdc89-4911-11e7-aed9-61b9c2c7b4ee’]