It's not the economy, it's public politics

It has become the custom to blame the economy or economists, for many of this world's ills. Critics are responsible for the rise in inequality, the lack of good jobs, financial fragility, and low economic growth, among other things. But while criticism may spur economists to try harder, the focus against this profession has not deliberately turned attention away from a discipline that may offer much more to blame: public policies.

Economics and public policies are closely related, but they are not the same, and they should not be seen this way. The economy is for public policy, just as physics is for engineering, or biology for medicine. While physics is fundamental to the design of missiles that can use energy to challenge gravity, Isaac Newton was not responsible for the disaster that happened to the space shuttle “Chalenger”. Likewise, biochem cannot be blamed for Michael Jackson's death.

Physics, biology and economics, such as science, answer questions about the nature of the world we live in, producing what economic historian Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University calls proposative knowledge. On the one hand, engineering, medicine, and public policy answer questions about how to change the world in certain ways, which leads us to what Mokyr calls recommendation knowledge.

Although engineering schools teach physics and medical schools biology, these professional disciplines have been removed in many ways from the established sciences. In fact, by developing its own criteria of excellence, quartilla, study, and career routes, engineering, and medicine have become unique species.

In contrast, public policy schools have not undergone an equivalent transformation. Many do not even employ from their own faculties, but use professors from basic sciences such as economy, psychology, sociologisty or political sciences. Public policy school at the university where I work, Harvard, has a very large faculty of its own but it recruits mostly Phd from basic science, and promotes them on the basis of their publications in major journals of these sciences, rather than on public policy.

The experience in policymaking before achieving professional sustainability is discouraged and is rare. And even those who have a certain life span in their profession have a surprisingly limited commitment to the world, which is because of the prevailing employment practices, as well as a fear that commitment outside the faculty can bring risks to the university's reputation. To compensate for this, public policy schools employ professors of practice, such as me, who have obtained early and elsewhere, experience in policy design.

In the sense of teaching, you might feel that public policy schools would have adapted a approach similar to medical schools. After all, both doctors and public policy experts are called on to solve problems and diagnose the causes of respect. They should also understand the series of possible solutions, as well as find the pros and cons of all. In the end, they must know how to apply the solution they propose and appreciate whether it is working.

And yet, most public policy schools offer master software only 1 or 2 years old, and they have a small Phd program with a structure usually similar to that of science. This approach is well behind the way medical schools train doctors and promote their discipline.

Medical schools (at least in the United States) accept students after they have completed a 4-year college programme in which they have attended a minimum series of courses. Medical students later attend a 2-year teaching program, followed by two years during which they go to several departments in so-called university hospitals, where they learn how things are done in practice, accompanied by doctors and their teams.

At the end of four-year-olds, young doctors receive a diploma. But then, they have to start a three-nine-year stand (on the basis of speciality) in a practical hospital, where they are monitored by more experienced but more responsible doctors. After 7 to 13 years of studies after graduation, they are finally allowed to work as doctors without supervision, although some attend, supervised, scholarships in certain areas.

Unlike medical schools, public policy schools virtually stop teaching students after two years of studying in class, and (other than Phd programs) do not offer the additional training years that medical schools offer. Yet, the model of university hospitals can also be effective in public policies.

Think, for example, of the Harvard University Growth Laboratory, which I founded in 2006 after two of my policy - map commitments in El Salvador and South Africa. Since then, we have worked in dozens of countries and regions. In some respects, the laboratory looks a little like a university hospital. He focuses on the search and on the clinical work of the “patients”, or governments in our case. In addition, we recruit graduates of Phd as well as graduates of masterry (such as medical students, after the first two years of school). We also recruit college graduates, as research assistants, or <x2fermiere”.

In addressing the problems of our <x0). And we work together with governments to implement these changes. And that's where we learn more. In this way, we ensure that the theory informs the practice, and that the observations made in practice inform our future research.

Governments are inclined to believe in the laboratory, because we don't have a profit motive, but just a desire to learn with them, helping them solve their problems. “Our students” stay with us for 3 to 9 years, just like in a medical school, and often take high positions in the governments of their countries after they leave. Instead of using our own experience to create “intellectual worker”, we give it through publication, online tools and courses. Our reward is that others apply our methods.

This structure was not planned: it just appeared on the way. It was not promoted from above, but was simply allowed to develop. However, if the idea of this “university psychics were embraced, it would radically change the way public policies would move forward, get used to and serve the world. Perhaps after that, people would stop blaming economists for things they should never have been responsible for.

Ricardo Hausmann, former Minister of Planning in Venezuela and former Chief Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank, is professor at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Director Growth Lab

Project Syndicate World.al