Noah Smith, Columnist

5 Economics Terms We All Should Use

Much of the language in the field is too vague. Here's a corrective.

January 5, 2017 at 4:04 PM UTC

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

Economists have a name for this.
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Every year, the Edge Foundation asks a bunch of scientists one interesting question. This year’s question was “What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?” The hundreds of answers are varied and fascinating, but I found myself wishing that a similar survey existed for economics. There are plenty of econ terms regular people would find not only very interesting, but useful for thinking about policy. Sadly, the most commonly used econ words tend to be the ones with the vaguest meanings -- “rational,” “equilibrium” and “efficient.” Instead, here are some of my suggestions:

• Endogeneity