Macroeconomics under Pressure: The Feedback Effects of Economic Expertise
Résumé
he influence of macroeconomists’ on policymakers through economic expertise is usually taken for granted. Yet, the reverse proposal appears far less elusive and as significant. From the analysis of Malinvaud’s writings, I set forth three significant feedback effects of economic expertise on macroeconomics, which has (i) become oversensitive to the results of economic policies, (ii) behaved as a tool for decision-making, and (iii) been impelled to search for internal consensus in order to guide policymaking. Taken together, these feedback effects of economic expertise
draw how macroeconomics has been structurally intertwined with policymakers’ needs and issues since World War II, thus providing
new insights on the “Keynesian consensus” in France and the broader history of macroeconomics.