NEW YORK ¨C When the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar and Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen received the Bharat Ratna, India¡¯s highest civilian award, a journalist is said to have asked them, ¡°Between the two of you, who is the more talented?¡±
Comparing musical and economic talent is in many ways meaningless. But Shankar offered an interesting response: ¡°Teach me economics for a week and ask me to give a lecture; I will manage it without making a fool of myself. Now, teach my friend Amartya to play the sitar for a week and ask him to give a public performance ... .¡±
The story is probably apocryphal. Nonetheless, it highlights a distinctive feature of economics. In many academic disciplines, it is difficult for someone who lacks a reasonable command of the subject to give a lecture without embarrassment, even to a lay audience. Not so with economics. Generally speaking, the average layperson cannot easily tell the difference between good and bad economics, owing not least to the discipline¡¯s broad range of content and disparate methodologies.
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