Do good economists need to be right wing?

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No.

However, since Milton Friedman got a couple things correct on the relationship between inflation and unemployment, every right wing halfwit likes to think they're an expert in economics simply because they are right wing.

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"Of course rent controls are bad, and I believe the minimum wage is too for the most part.  I was just trying to give my hypothesis for why phD economists seem to be more liberal than BA/BS/"self-educated" economists."



We covered the Card and ? study on the impact of a minimum wage rise in New Jersey in our 200 level labour economics class.

Regarding economics PhDs and academia. Anecdotal of course, but the only two economics PhDs I'm aware of are two former NDP politicians, Dave Schreck, who had a PhD in health economics and Matt Toner who has been mentioned on another thread in this forum.  Schreck went into health care management for unions becoming the General Manager of CU & C Health Services and Toner became a trade diplomat.

Schreck now runs the website strategicthoughts.com which is worth reading and rather numbers heavy, but isn't about economics.

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Not protecting 'infant industries' makes it more likely that secondary support industries in support of those products/services from the 'infant industries' will develop.  While the local infant industries may never develop to become export capable because they are protected, the secondary industries will likely become competitive internationally.

Think of protecting the local Atari's or Microsoft's vs developing Activision or Google.

Also, if the 'infant industry' is used for imputs for other businesses, protecting the infant industry makes those businesses less competitive.

Generally business organizations oppose protections for infant industries, except, of course, the industrial organizations in those areas.