Asymmetry, Disagreement and Biases: Epistemic Worries about Expertise

Minimal (Disagreement About) Semantics

Disagreement about Inflation Expectations

Analyzing 50 years of inflation expectations data from several sources, we document substantial disagreement among both consumers and professional economists about expected future inflation. Moreover, this disagreement shows substantial variation through time, moving with inflation, the absolute value of the change in inflation, and relative price variability. We argue that a satisfactory model...

Epistemic Relativism and Reasonable Disagreement [version of June, 2007]

I begin with some familiar conceptions of epistemic relativism. One kind of epistemic relativism is descriptive pluralism. This is the simple, non-normative thesis that many different communities, cultures, social networks, etc. endorse different epistemic systems (E-systems), i.e., different sets of norms, standards, or principles for forming beliefs and other doxastic states. Communities try ...

Pre-professional worries bring about reorganization

by Dave Collins A suspicion that Rice is not producing students for professional schools as efficiently as possible has led to a reorganization of Rice's pre-professional advising effort . Beginning this fall, premedical, pre-law and pre-business students will have new faces to which to turn for counseling. Dr. Ronald Stebbings, Rice's dean of undergraduate affairs, recently announced the estab...

A Siblings Study on Worries about Immigration

The existing literature on attitudes towards immigration has not accounted for the potential effect of unobservable home education on attitude formation. Yet, factors such as parents’ knowledge, their morals, and their weltanschauung are likely to influence the attitudes of the next generation. Their omission from the analysis thus threatens to lead to erroneous conclusions. Utilizing siblings ...