Economists agree on key economic questions

Ask two doctors and you get two opinions, ask two economists and you get three. It often seems that professional economists are not even able to agree on key economic questions: Is immigration beneficial? Are ethanol requirements in gasoline fuel-inefficient? Could the financial crisis in Greece trigger bank runs in peripheral countries of the Eurozone? Recent evidence evaluated by Roger Gordon and Gordon B. Dahl suggests that this perception is wrong: The authors find a broad consensus on many different economic issues, particularly when the past economic literature on the question is large. Moreover, they do not find that partisan preferences have an impact on an economist’s answer.