Gerald Epstein, UMass Amherst economics professor and founding co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, and Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth, UMass Amherst economics Ph.D. student, examine the conflict of interest that can occur when academic financial economists, presumed to be objective experts, fail to report their private financial affiliations in the course of their public discourse in the media. The authors look at these linkages in the cases of nineteen academic financial economists, and assess the impacts that these conflicts may have had on the economists’ proposals for financial reform policy.
>>Read media coverage of this study in the Boston Globe, New York Times and on NPR
>>Download “Financial Economists, Financial Interests and Dark Corners of the Meltdown: It’s Time to Set Ethical Standards for the Economics Profession”
>>Read a related essay, “Conflicts of Interest and the Financial Crisis”
One reply on “Economists, Ethics, and Financial Policy”
[…] Real talk: If you want a center-right view of the financial collapse and financial reform, I’d recommend checking out the The Squam Lake Report, which has Duffie, Rajan, Cochrane and many others.  You should note that many of the authors are embedded pretty deep in the financial markets and have huge conflicts, well documented in this fascinating interview with Gerald Epstein about his paper documenting these conflicts (more on that). […]