Might economists be partly to blame for Trump and moves towards a ‘full British Brexit’?

The reasons for the Trump phenomenon and Brexit vote are many and various, but have we overlooked ways in which standard economics, by failing to take seriously the radical uncertainty endemic in modern political economies, has contributed to the populist turn? Richard Bronk argues that by mischaracterising their profession as able to make precise forecasts of uncertain futures – an impossible task – economists contributed to the current denigration of experts. More importantly, by assuming that people form rational expectations, they encouraged us to ignore the transformative power of simple narratives.