Spitting In The Ocean

Everybody's an Economist - Where are the Economists?

A scientist friend recently shared some nutrient reduction estimates with me that included stuff that Maryland Department of Agriculture might someday call their cost efficiency estimates. When I asked who advised him on the economics, he admitted that he hadn't sought or received economic advice on his measures. He was estimating the factors that he had been asked to estimate.

Then, the other day, another scientist acquaintance called to talk about an oyster restoration proposal that had, as a supporting factor, strong economic underpinnings. When I asked who had advised him on those economics, he said he advised himself. I don't believe that he ever spent a semester on price theory, but I can't say for sure. He is widely read.

There are important facets of the Chesapeake Bay restoration that could be illuminated with applied economics. Yet, rather than employ trained economists to provide this, people (agency staff, ecologists, biometricians, etc.) these days seem to want to wing the economics.

Here's the problem with that. The measures of BMP cost efficiencies that my friend estimated assume that MDA is a perfect price discriminator, picking all the suppliers right off the supply curve. Since there is no practical reason to believe that MDA can actually do that, their cost efficiency estimates are not all that useful. A more realistic supply curve is revealed if implementation costs - not prices paid - are used to estimate nutrient reduction efficiencies.

So where are the trained economists? I wondered this six months ago, when a friend who works for the Bay Program - another scientist - asked if there wasn't some way economists could be engaged to advise the Bay program with respect to the TMDL and the changing roles of the Bay program partners. I took the bait and asked some area economists what they would say if the Bay Program asked them how economics could inform the programs and policies employed to achieve Bay restoration goals.

Being economists, respondents went for the meta-perspective and pointed out that since my question was hypothetical and the Bay program is not spending any resource on economic input, the more fundamental question is; why don't the policy makers want to hear from economists? Additional substantive points were raised, but the discussion was limited by that basic fact. That the Bay Program has not actually asked economists to contribute to the cause.

So, that seems to be the shape of things. There is no effective demand from Bay Program policy-makers for economic assistance: perhaps because they do not know how useful such assistance could be. And, there is a certain amount of "miffed-ness" on behalf of professional/academic economists who are not accustomed to advocating on their own account (outside professional journals). In the meantime, the Bay gets worse and we continue to spend money in a manner that is not, shall we say, optimal. Is it just me, or is this not truly a sorry situation?

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