TY  - JOUR
AU  - Duflo, Esther
TI  - The Economist as Plumber
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 23213
PY  - 2017
Y2  - March 2017
DO  - 10.3386/w23213
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23213
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23213.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Esther Duflo
Department of Economics, E52-544
MIT
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel: 617/258-7013
E-Mail: eduflo@mit.edu
AB  - As economists increasingly help governments design new policies and regulations, they take on an added responsibility to engage with the details of policy making and, in doing so, to adopt the mindset of a plumber. Plumbers try to predict as well as possible what may work in the real world, mindful that tinkering and adjusting will be necessary since our models gives us very little theoretical guidance on what (and how) details will matter. This essay argues that economists should seriously engage with plumbing, in the interest of both society and our discipline.
ER  -