Tyler Cowen argues that there's something of a vast left-wing conspiracy among economists in academia: "Often the real dissent in economics comes from the free market side; left-wing heterodoxy is more aligned with the mainstream than it cares to admit." Now it's certainly true that most economists in academia are not as gung-ho about unregulated free markets as Cowen is, but that's a far cry from suggesting, as Cowen's George Mason colleague Daniel Klein does, that the academic economics establishment reflects the views of someone like Robert Reich. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of data on this question, but the one piece of evidence Cowen cites--that econ professors contribute to Democrats over the GOP at a ratio of about 5 to 1--isn't especially convincing. For one thing, there's no reason to believe that economists' party affiliations derive from their academic views, rather than their preferences on foreign policy or social issues. And even the economists who are unabashed Democrats tend to be far more neoliberal in their policy views than the candidates to whom they contribute (and work for). My old professor Jeffrey Liebman, for instance, favors private Social Security accounts--but I'm guessing there's not a great chance he'll be able to convince Barack Obama, whom he's advising, to support them. That the economics establishment can be substantially more laissez-faire than the general population (and, for that matter, the rest of academia) while still being less laissez-faire than Cowen is mostly just indicative of how far out of the political mainstream Cowen is. --Josh Patashnik