Macroeconomics under Pressure: The Feedback Effects of Economic Expertise

Abstract

Macroeconomics is said to exert a decisive influence on policy-makers/-making through economic expertise. This influence is usually assumed or taken for granted in-and outside academic circles. Yet, the reverse proposal, i.e. policy-makers' influence on macroeconomics, appears to be far less elusive and as significant. This paper sheds light on three such significant "feedback effects" of expertise on macroeconomics based on Edmond Malinvaud's writings. First, expertise has made the discipline highly sensitive to the results of economic policies. Second, expertise has impelled macroeconomics to behave as a tool for decision-making. Third, it has spurred the discipline to search for a consensus since WWII, for this is a necessary condition for economic expertise to be operative.