Saturday, February 14, 2009

Economic Quiz

Here's another quiz, this one a fairly detailed economic one at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, called, "Are You an Austrian?" Most of the answers fall into one of four categories: Austrian school, Chicago school, Keynesian/Neoclassical, and Socialist. My score: 74/100. The result measures how close you are to the Austrian school.

4 comments:

  1. Although the questions are pretty good as a basis for Austrian economics, they're bad for other schools. The difference between Chicago school economics and New Keynesianism isn't the beliefs about the nature of private property, for example.

    Another problem is that Austrian and socialist economics are really marginal. Mainstream libertarians are either Chicago economists or occasionally New Keynesians; and most socialists ignore economic questions, or believe in some form of Keynesianism.

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  2. Yeah, the quiz is to see how close you are to Austrian. To be anything like a comprehensive measure of position, it would need to include a separate quiz for each of the other schools of thought based on their criteria.

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  3. Well, it measures how close you are to Austrian based on how Austrians perceive themselves. If I were to design an Austrian quiz, I'd ask you to agree or disagree with statements like,
    1. In the US in 1933, inflation was a bigger worry than unemployment;
    2. Inflation is a socialist plot to rob people of their wealth;
    3. Currency should always be indexed to the gold standard; and
    4. Studies involving numerical evidence are useless in social sciences.
    With a few more statements like those, I could show that most people and almost all economists completely reject Austrian economic principles.

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  4. "Well, it measures how close you are to Austrian based on how Austrians perceive themselves."

    It is their quiz.

    "I could show that most people and almost all economists completely reject Austrian economic principles."

    I think that's a huge overstatement.

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