The Secret Lives of Economists

A recent Wall Street Journal piece provides a rare glimpse into the propensities and proclivities of economists. If you don’t find what the economists are doing at all unusual, then you are probably in the right place.

The article includes a nice couple of quotes from Yoram Bauman, who will be speaking at Lawrence later this year:

“The economics students seem to be born guilty, and the other students seem to lose their innocence when they take an economics class,” says Mr. Bauman, who has a stand-up comedy act he’ll be doing at the economists’ Atlanta conference Sunday night. Among his one-liners: “You might be an economist if you refuse to sell your children because they might be worth more later.”

I’m not sure if the take-home point is that we take our models too seriously or not seriously enough.