Who Is Your Spirit Economist?

Greg Mankiw is Ray Fair, or at least they agree on most things. That is, according to this quiz Mankiw took and blogged about, which is based on data from Chicago Booth’s Initiative on Global Markets Economic Experts Panel.

 The IGM Forum team surveys leading economists on major public policy issues and explores the extent to which they agree or disagree with each other. Its participants are ideologically diverse, and among them are Nobel Laureates, John Bates Clark Medalists, and past members of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

The quiz asks users the same questions put to the economists—on everything from student credit risk, to slavery, to charitable deductions—and compares their answers to the panelists’ answers. The site takes all that information, crunches the data, and displays the name of the economist who answered closest. (It also displays a graph, which is noisier, and which will likely be updated soon.)

Thus, you can find your spirit economist. 

Chris Said, a postdoc at the Center for Neural Science at NYU, is the author of the quiz. He plans to keep refining and adding tools to the quiz, so check back often. You can follow him on Twitter here.