Douglas Goldstein: John Palmer is teaching economics at the University of Western Ontario
since 1971.
He also blogs at Eclecticon.
Who do you think should have won last year’s Noble Prize in economics?
John Palmer: I’ve written that I thought Richard Posner who teaches at the University
of Chicago Law School and is a judge in Chicago should have won it because he said even though
Ronald Coast founded the field of law and economics Richard Posner really pushed it
right out to the extremes to apply in economics to so many differ areas.
I’ve sort of changed my mind a little bit though.
I think Deirdre McCloskey would also be an excellent choice.
Her work on bureaucracies and culture and markets and economic history is just fantastic.
I would love to see either one of those win the Noble Prize.
Douglas Goldstein: Why is it important who wins the Noble Pricz, what effect does that
have?
John Palmer: It signals I think to a lot of people what’s important in economics.
So when the most recent winner won, it said that everyone let’s step back from all of
the mathematical hieroglyphics that we see in so many economics journals and apply some
common sense economics, that was a good award that was made recently and I had no objections
to that one.
If they award the prize to people who have done nothing but mathematical theoretical
models, that’s a mistake I think.
It’s signalling to people that you don’t have to have economics that applies in a real
world and I’d rather have people like Posner or Deirdre McCloskey win the price which both
of them apply economics to the real world, they show such a wide array of applications
of economics.
Douglas Goldstein: I like what you said about bringing the prize beyond just
someone figuring out some mathematical model, but do you think that’s becoming more and
more political and a lot of people feel for example the Noble piece prize is just a political
push to try to make some sort of radical change in the world that many people may not agree
with.
John Palmer: It certainly is a political prize in economics and to have the prize go to certain
people whom I referred to as sort of east coast liberal interventionist to lead us signals
one thing as it did with some of the people who’ve won recently in recent years.
Having Angus Deaton win the price I think is a great shift.
I talked with a member who is someone who is a member of the committee that awarded
the Noble Prize in economics a few years ago and he told me that he was astounded by the
number of invitations, he got to go to different universities who had people whom they were
campaigning to win the Noble Prize, it’s a very political, highly campaigned process.
Douglas Goldstein: Everyone assumes the piece price is just you know one of these kind of
prize that doesn’t really mean anything, it’s just what the noble committee wants
to when the want to push their agenda but are you saying that the economics prizes are
the same and maybe we just don’t understand it?
John Palmer: To some extent I think they are but awarding the prize to Angus Deaton really
did switch things around a bit and a couple of the others is a switch around too so it
looks to me as if the Noble prize in economics is less political than the Noble piece prize.
Douglas Goldstein: I understand you’ve joined an organization called Scholars Without Borders
and I think this is an important organization especially as it relates to BDS.
Can you tell us a little bit why you are moving in that direction?
John Palmer: I started writing about these kinds of issues over a decade ago on my blog
when people started trying to ban scholars who had anything to do with Israel and immediately
I acquired affiliation with University of Haifa and a couple of other schools in Israel
even though I’ve never been to Israel myself, I wanted to make sure that everybody knew
where I stood, that I was absolutely opposed to the BDS movement, I have those thoughts
for two reasons.
One I really firmly believe in academic freedom and I think that it doesn’t matter who says
the things, it’s the ideas that count and we have to deal with ideas, not people.
But secondly as you know from reading my blog, I’m pretty strongly pro-Israel even though
I’m a Gentile and I don’t have any strong beliefs about chosen people or any of that,
it’s just I’m firmly pro-Israel and have been ever since I think probably the mid-50s.
Douglas Goldstein: So you used the word banning, today it’s actually a big topic of many
books about how there is kind of the stifling of academic discussion on campuses, but hasn’t
that really always been around, I mean today maybe people are claimants coming from the
left but in the past maybe it came from the right, isn’t that just the way you build
up your position, you just shut the other people down?
John Palmer: I think that happens in every discipline, you are absolutely right, it just
happened all through time, certainly when I was an undergraduate, academia seemed to
be more right wing and the students were more left wing and the students opposed all of
that and we were concerned about freedom of speech.
Remember the 1960s freedom of speech movement that came out of Berkley California.
That was a pretty important movement.
Unfortunately it doesn’t stand for freedom of speech anymore it stands more for just
left wing diatribes.
Douglas Goldstein: If you were in charge of deciding, you have your opinion, you say listen
I’m not even interested in the other side because I’ve already disapproved in that,
is that being non-academically fair or is that just saying you know I’m not going
to bring on every view on to campus so views that are clearly wrong or that have been proven
wrong, no point in hearing them?
John Palmer: I completely agree with you that if somebody came in and said I want to teach
creationism, I would not want to hire that person but in economics if someone came in
and said I want to teach 1960s Keynesianism I would also say “Hey wait a minute” and
a lot of economics department have had to go through that kind of transition.
We don’t want to hire people who were still trying to teach stuff that’s been proven
wrong.
Douglas Goldstein: Doesn’t Paul Krugman have a job?
John Palmer: Paul Krugman you know built up some pretty darn good credentials 20 years
ago and if just don’t read the stuff he writes in the New York Times and you are fine.
Douglas Goldstein: I just heard recently that someone set up a new podcast called the “Contra
Krugman Podcast” it says guys, every week they read this article and then they tell
you why they think it’s wrong.
Talk to me a little bit about the BDS movement but not from a political standpoint but how
is that going to affect the economy both let’s say of Israel and is that a good method in
order to affect change, if people want to affect change in Israel or are they really
ultimately hurting themselves through this boycott, divest and BDS?
John Palmer: I have seen very few boycott movements actually succeed.
There was one in Chicago when I lived there in the mid-60s wherein people boycotted Pepsi
to get them to hire more blacks, that seemed to work probably because there was I think
a moral rightness on the side of those people as well but there are so many other boycott
movements that haven’t seemed to work and I think the BDS people are just completely
screwed up, they don’t understand it.
A lot of the people who are going to get harmed are the workers on the West Bank, the Palestinian
workers, I mean that’s absolutely nuts to try to hurt the people.
There are a lot of people who boycotted all kinds of in South Africa before South Africa
got rid of this apartheid.
Again they were harming an awful lot of the people there and not really brining about
the change, I think the change came about from a sort of a moral revulsion to apartheid.
Douglas Goldstein: So you are arguing that boycotting on a practical matter may not work
and therefore it’s not worth engaging in?
John Palmer: That’s part of it also and the other thing though is I just think they
are wrong to want to do this in the first place.
The want to boycott people who have sort of immoral positions, let’s start talking about
boycotting Iran and Iraq and Saudi Arabia, I mean let’s boycott these places that has
horrible human rights issues.
What about China and Tibet, let’s go after some of these other countries that have done
such horrible things compared with what Israel has done, I mean I may not agree with what
Israel does on the West Bank and have questions about that but come on, this is crazy to be
boycotting them because of those things compared with all the other things that are going on
that are so wrong in
the world.
Douglas Goldstein: You mentioned earlier you consider yourself a supporter of Israel from
the Gentile standpoint.
Tell me where that comes from?
John Palmer: I think it started because I was one of these left wing people who wants
to support the little guy, the victim and Israel was certainly the little guy, the victim
until 1967 and from then on I realized Israel has a democracy, Israel is pro-human rights.
Israel is a place where an awful lot of stuff that’s really good in the world happens
compared with all of the people who have not been supporting Israel and the people who
are fighting Israel and who still want to drive Israel into the sea.
It’s really hard for me not to support Israel when I think about those things.
Douglas Goldstein: Tell us how can people follow you and follow your work.
John Palmer: There are two ways to follow me, my blog is www.eclecticon.net and that
comes from eclectic economist, that’s how I came up with that name, eclecticon and I’m
also on Facebook and almost everything around on Facebook is open to the public.
John Palmer, you can find me there.