Left versus Right: What’s the Big Deal?
To get some perspective, I calculated belief gaps between laymen of the far left (very liberal Democrats) and laymen of the far right (very conservative Republicans). For the SAEE’s 37 questions, the average absolute value of this belief gap is .30 on a 0–2 scale. I also calculated belief gaps between Ph.D. economists and the general public. All else equal, the average absolute value of this belief gap is .52. In other words, the belief gap between economists and the public is more than 70 percent larger than the belief gap between America’s far left and far right. If that isn’t big, what is?