Survey: Liberals Are the Least "Economically Enlightened"

In a red meat nugget for this weekend, No Oil for Pacifists links to a study published in this month's Econ Journal Watch.  Zeljka Buturovic, research associate with Zogby International, and Daniel B. Klein, professor of economics at George Mason University, surveyed over 4800 American adults to gauge their "economic enlightenment." One of the variables they looked at was political ideology. From the study:

In the tables that follow, using the two-point scale, we report on the percentage of response that are INCORRECT. Thus, in the tables that follow, high numbers are bad. We focus on incorrect responses to highlight the problem of “people knowing what ain’t so.” Table 1 again shows that, for people inclined to participate in such a survey, going to college is not correlated with economic enlightenment. With the large sample size, all but the smallest of differences are statistically significant at the 0.05 level. 

The line at the bottom reports for each ideological group the average number of incorrect answers. Adults self-identifying “very conservative” and “libertarian” perform the best, followed closely by “conservative.” Trailing far behind are “moderate,” then with another step down to “liberal,” and a final step to “progressive,” who, on average, get wrong 5.26 questions out of eight.

Here again we should acknowledge that none of the eight questions challenge typical conservative or libertarian policy positions, and that had some such questions been included, the measured economic-enlightenment means by ideological groups may well have been somewhat different.

Nonetheless, we think that the measurement as-is captures something real. At least since the days of Frédéric Bastiat, many have said that people of the left often trail behind in incorporating basic economic insight into their aesthetics, morals, and politics. We put much stock in Hayek’s theory (Hayek 1978, 1979, 1988) that the social-democratic ethos is an atavistic reassertion of the ethos and mentality of the primordial paleolithic band, a mentality resistant to ideas of spontaneous order and disjointed knowledge. Our findings support such a claim, all the caveats notwithstanding. Several of the questions would seem to be fairly neutral with respect to partisan politics, particularly the questions on licensing, the standard of living, monopoly, and free trade. None of those questions challenge policies that are particularly leftwing or rationalized on the basis of equity. Yet even on such neutral questions the “progressives” and “liberals” do much worse than the “conservatives” and “libertarians.”

MaxedOutMama points out the demographics of the sample size are not representative:

It is very skewed toward the male, it is very skewed toward higher education, it is hugely skewed toward voters, etc. 

She also notes: 

It is weirdly fascinating in some awful ways. Note particularly the better performance among Walmart shoppers as opposed to non-Walmart shoppers, wealthier households as opposed to poorer households, high-frequency religious service attenders as opposed to non-service-going, and atheist/realist/humanists/Christians as opposed to Jewish/Muslims. The last two are driving me to the data; the dataset might be hugely skewed on the smaller groups.

Some other interesting things the survey found:

• College education is not correlated to economic enlightenment, although this contradicts findings from some other studies 
• McCain voters did better than Obama voters, non-union members fared better than union members, married better than singles, folks who answered whether they were considered a resident of "America" did better than those that considered themselves citizens "of planet earth," military members did better than non-military members, NASCAR fans did better than non-fans, and males outscored females.

Update: If you had trouble viewing Table 1, here it is:

Here are the questions:

The statements of the eight questions used are the following: 

1. Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable. 

• Unenlightened: Disagree

2. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services. 

• Unenlightened: Disagree 

3. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.

• Unenlightened: Disagree 

4. Rent control leads to housing shortages.

• Unenlightened: Disagree 

5. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.

• Unenlightened: Agree

6. Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited.

• Unenlightened: Agree

7. Free trade leads to unemployment.

• Unenlightened: Agree

8. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.

•  Unenlightened: Disagree