Michale McAleer. An Empirical Inquiry of Economists' Consensus or Dissension : The Case of Seven Pacific-Rim Nations

Abstract

This study reports the survey results on the degree of consensus of economists of seven Pacific-rim nations (Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, USA, Canada and New Zealand). To our best knowledge, this will be the first survey study which covers Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, Singapore and Australia. The degree of consensus is measured by relative entropy. Our survey results reveal several interesting aspects such as (1) the degree of consensus is the highest in the propositions asking the desirability of free trade. (2) Keynesian macro-policies are more strongly supported than Monetarists macro-policies in Korea, Japan and Australia, while the reverse is true in USA and Singapore, (3) the degrees of consensus in macro-policy related propositions are quite low so that it is hard to find a core of economists' beliefs in macro-policy issues, (4) there exist statistically significant differences in the degree of consensus between microeconomic propositions and macroeconomic propositions in Asian countries. Several other survey results and interpretation are introduced and discussed in the present study.