Zur Verantwortung des Wissenschaftlers bei der Politikberatung

The paper discusses normative issues that arise when scholars provide policy advice. Economics has a tradition, which goes back to the origins of the discipline in the enlightenment, of warning against value judgements in theory and making value judgements in practice. Policy recommendations in pursuit of “efficiency” do not provide a convincing justification for the practice; the distributional consequences matter even if they are kept under the rug. The more recent practice of using “efficiency” as a basis for descriptive analysis introduces a source of serious bias. The lack of a professional routine for choosing which tools are appropriate for studying a given sludge of facts makes for an additional reason to exercise caution. Whereas academic freedom precludes the imposition of such normative appeals from the outside, critical open discussion should provide a needed disciplining mechanism.