Book Review: Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy

Abstract

Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy is critical reading for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars interested in governance, political economy, ethics, equity, and the origins and influence of the 'economic style of reasoning' on federal policymaking and corresponding values and priorities. Elizabeth Popp Berman (2022) meticulously draws on over 3,000 primary and secondary resources and archival sources to elucidate how this 'economic style of reasoning' was legitimated and institutionalized through multiple pathways, including government offices, law and policy schools, and policy research organizations. This engaging, accessible book covers contemporary concerns, including student loan debates, and concludes with proposing what values, thoughts, and actions may facilitate ambitious reform efforts, in such areas as health and the environment.Drawing on Ian Hacking (1992) and his 'style of reasoning' concept, Berman (2022) delineates how particular expertise and values, including efficiency, trade-offs, and incentives, predominated and shaped policy discussions in Washington DC between the 1960s and 1980s across nearly all governance sectors. A growing contingency of Democrats, particularly the center-left, embraced 'thinking like an economist' and cost-benefit analysis, while distancing themselves from populist antitrust. Within the healthcare context, for instance, cost-sharing and means-testing in service of efficiency crowded out "liberal arguments based on rights, universalism, and inequality" (Berman, 2022, p. 196). RAND (short for Research ANd Development) was awarded $80 million to supervise analysis and testing of the economic theory of moral hazard, which suggests fully insured constituents would overuse healthcare. Consequently, President Nixon thwarted universal Medicare coverage expansion after insisting policy plan adoption centering cost sharing, employer mandates, and market competition would avert moral hazard.A sociologist by training, Berman has significantly published on knowledge production and use within various organizational contexts. In this vein, her 2015 book systematically analyzes shifting political contexts and alliances and ideological and behavioral responses involving universities and science policy, which positioned academic science closer to the market. Of note, Berman's balanced, empirically informed and critical perspectives in Thinking Like an

Issue Introduction

“…Finally, in her review of the book, Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy, by Berman (2022), Golembeski (2022) evaluates an important contribution to understanding federal policymaking and how the economic-based values and priorities of efficiency have permeated and shaped such policy discussions. Golembeski (2022) describes the comprehensive data collection undertaken by the book's author and how the author builds upon prior research in explaining the progression of policy design and implementation over several decades. Through promotion of an interdisciplinary perspective, Golembeski (2022) asserts the book is invaluable to expand our understanding of the role of economists in shaping policy discourse, as well as the limitations such a perspective poses for governance.…”

“…Golembeski (2022) describes the comprehensive data collection undertaken by the book's author and how the author builds upon prior research in explaining the progression of policy design and implementation over several decades. Through promotion of an interdisciplinary perspective, Golembeski (2022) asserts the book is invaluable to expand our understanding of the role of economists in shaping policy discourse, as well as the limitations such a perspective poses for governance.…”