Humour in economics: It exists, intended or not
PremiumThe so-called ‘dismal science’ can be funnier than popularly suspected and economic jokes aren’t all that scarce, even if some of the laughter it generates isn’t exactly aimed at that end
Ever since the 19th-century theoretician and reactionary Thomas Carlyle labelled economics “the dismal science", influenced somewhat by dire predictions made by English cleric and economist Thomas Robert Malthus, the discipline has always appeared to outsiders as a bit of a drudge, dry and devoid of passion or emotion. Economics, with its abundance of statistics and mathematics, can indeed appear dense and baffling to the uninitiated. But can economics and humour become bed-fellows, or are they doomed to eternal antagonism? Opening a discussion on the economics of humour, or humour in economics, host of the podcast Ones and Tooze, Cameron Abadi, asked his colleague and economic historian Adam Tooze this question: How many Chicago School economists does it take to change a light-bulb? The corny answer to that should be ‘none’; because if laissez faire tenets are in play, the market would be able fix everything without any human intervention.
A paper by David Herberich, Michael Price and John List that bears a similar title, How Many Economists Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb?, is anything but funny. It talks about how to raise the adoption rate of energy-saving bulbs in homes and uses some fancy math to demonstrate its solemnity. But many other jokes about economists have been around for years. Take this old wisecrack attributed to novelist and playwright George Bernard Shaw: If you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they would never reach a conclusion. Other quips abound on the internet. Here’s one: You might be an economist if you think “supply and demand" is a good answer to “Where do babies come from?" Serious economists are expected to write serious papers and books to get ahead in academia. But, on occasion, these publications inspire mirth; the ever-expanding universe of economic literature is studded with many such gems. Examples include Nobel laureate Paul Krugman’s The Theory of Interstellar Trade, about interest charges should time get warped by shipments at the near speed of light, and Harvard Professor Edward Glaeser’s The Cinderella Paradox Resolved, on how uneven investment in kids might actually be a strategy for a winner-takes-all marriage market.
For all the harm they can and often do, real-life economic policies also have the capacity to evoke chuckles. An attempt by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government in Sri Lanka to reduce the outgo of dollars by banning fertilizer imports and forcing farmers to adopt organic farming in the midst of a crisis would be side-splitting had it not been so sad for Sri Lankans. At home, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to invalidate 86% of all currency in circulation without offering an alternative is bound to find space in the Hall of Fame for Warped Economic Policies one day. Another contender would be Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s effort to quell inflation in Turkey by loosening monetary policy after sacking one central bank chief after another. All three are ‘strong leaders’ and the unintended consequences of their actions were enough to ensure diminishing marginal risibility. None of those policy moves was funny, given how tragic their spillover effects have proven for hapless millions. Economics can seem dismal even when the limits of absurdity are put to a test. Yet, it pays to retain a sense of humour. The ability to laugh and crack jokes is a human attribute. And that’s essential for drafting humane policies.
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