ECONOMISTS ’ VIEWS ABOUT THE ECONOMY Evidence from a survey of Italian economists

This paper is about economists and their consensus on economic policies. Using a representative sample of Italian economists as a case study, we show that there is substantial disagreement among economists on both the causes of the Italian economic slowdown and on the most effective economic policies to be implemented for a recov-ery. Searching for a motivation of this disagreement, we regress the individual views on economic policy proposals on a set of covariates: individual characteristics, individual specific information about the Italian economy, indi-vidual interpretation of the causes of the economic difficulties in Italy, individual research field and methodological approach, political opinions and individual values. While the first two groups of covariates are not systematically correlated to individual positions on economic policy proposals, the last three groups are. In particular, the level of pro-market orientation is relevant in the case of economic policy proposals characterized by a high consensus, while political ideology, the degree of optimism and, again, pro-market orientation are relevant in the case of economi