Welfarism, Libertarian Paternalism and Political Economy: Three Perspectives on Economic Expertise1

This paper proposes and compares different characterization of what an economic expert is — his/her role, functions and legitimacy — according to different conceptions of economics: welfarism, libertarian paternalism and positive political economy. We show that both welfarism and libertarian paternalism allows expert to impose their views, their preferences to the individuals. This is not the case with political economy. Economists are experts, at least in the eyes of legislators and judges and juries. This is not high praise; it means that economists have professional training, but not necessarily that they possess a body of useful knowledge that will be almost universally be accepted by similarly trained people, George J. Stigler, Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist, p. 123