I’ve seen a bunch of epidemiologists snarking about negative oil prices being their chance to play amateur economist, but I think when weird stuff happens the views of smart outsiders can be extremely valuable.

A bunch of “weird stuff” — most notably persistent low or even negative interest rates — has happened in the world economy over the past ten years and the most insightful people on it have often been non-economists or at a minimum at the margins of the profession.

A weird quirk of how graduate education works is that “economists” are basically “people who are good at math” rather than “people who know about the economy” so they can contribute in some unexpected areas but also have surprisingly little insight on how economies work.

Economists have done tons of great work demonstrating the harms of air pollution (requires hard math) for example, but try asking them why Russia is richer than Mexico and it’s going to be crickets.

(I also do not know why Russia is richer than Mexico FYI but I’m very open to the possibility that the answer will arise from some discipline other than economics)