Ethan Bueno de Mesquita
ECONOMICS STANDS DEEPLY COMMITTED to quantification, especially in its most policy-facing branches. Indeed, a particular approach to quantification for policy analysis is what many applied economists mean by economics. This dogma of quantification creates perils for policy that are, in my view, as significant as the market fundamentalism the EfIP authors highlight. As economists rethink the relationship between their discipline and public policy, they would be well served grappling with these issues.
In a textbook vision of policy analysis, quantification is simply a tool; it measures and scores policy alternatives rather than shaping the alternatives themselves. We are invited to think of quantification as in service of policy aims that are defined elsewhere and by others. But this view, while popular, is misleading. We cannot divide the world into a neat dualism of aims and tools. How and what we quantify shapes and determines the aims of public policy, just as those aims shape and determine what we quantify.