Sciences are loosely characterized by an agenda to describe the mechanisms by which observable outcomes are brought about and the privileging of propositions that have been demonstrated to have negligible risk of Type I error. Economics, despite its pretensions, does neither of these and should not be regarded as scientific in its current form. Its subject matter, however, is no more recalcitrant to scientific procedures than that of many other fields, like geology and biology. The benefit of bringing economics into greater conformity with other sciences in its content and method would be twofold: we would be spared the embarrassment of unfounded dogma, and over time economics could assemble an ever larger body of knowledge capable of being accepted at a high level of confidence. A scientific economics would take Type I error far more seriously, would study mechanisms rather than a succession of states, would be more experimental and would attach greater value to primary data collection.

The paper by Helen Johns and Paul Ormerod, “The unhappy thing about happiness economics“, that appeared in the last issue of this journal has attracted an uncommonly large number of readers. In addition to downloads of the whole issue, Johns and Ormerod’s paper has to date been downloaded over 12,000 times, more than twice the average rate. Given this strength of interest and the paper’s strong and consequential thesis, a dozen leading practitioners of happiness economics have been approached, offering them a chance to reply. So far none have ventured forth. If there is any economist out there who feels capable of rebutting all or part of Johns and Ormerod’s arguments, then a space awaits them in this journal.

Two recent articles in this journal by Jim Stanford and the late Margaret Legum strongly condemn the measurements of economic freedom published by the Fraser Institute and the Heritage Foundation.1 As researchers associated with the Frasier Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index we feel that it is necessary to address some issues raised by their commentaries as they relate to the EFW index.
Both Legum and Stanford believe that the problem with these indexes is that they are pro-business indexes that ignore normal, regular people. In the critical words of Stanford, the indexes say “what is good for investors and employers, is good for everyone.”

In their response to critiques of their measurement of economic “freedom”, Joshua C. Hall, Robert Lawson, and Will Luther have done us a favour in laying bare the extreme libertarian philosophies which underpin their work.
The Economic Freedom of the World project (an international initiative coordinated by Canada’s right-wing Fraser Institute) attempts to quantify a highly neoclassical conception of freedom: namely, the extent to which economic agents (investors, entrepreneurs, workers, and consumers) are free from interference or constraint from government regulations, taxes, collective bargaining, or other intrusions. As Hall et al. explain, this conception is a nominally neutral conception of “negative liberty”: that is, it measures the extent to which individual agents are not interfered with. But it captures no positive rights which individuals may claim in the economic sphere – such as the right to employment, the right to a basic standard of living, or the right to organize a union and bargain collectively.