This column is to appear in the Augusta Business Chronicle (March 2001). Economists Are Doctors, Too The other day it occurred to me that economists have much in common with your family doctor. When you visit either one of us, we have only four options at our disposal. First, we can diagnose and confidently treat a certain problem. Second, we can diagnose a problem but do not know of a cure. Third, we can diagnose but the patient does not or cannot cooperate because he is either unwilling or unable to do so. And fourth, we cannot even diagnose the illness and can only offer pain killers but no cure. For example, in many circles the California energy debacle is attributed to market deregulation. In truth, this is a case in which the patient did not follow the doctor's order. Deregulation, the way an economist prescribes it, did not in fact take place. Instead, the patient took only one part of the prescribed medicine – and audaciously added a hefty portion of a self-concocted home remedy without bothering to check back with the doctor. So California suffers, and suffers badly. There is not much the doctor can do if the patient does not listen. Regrettably, in this case the patient has an infectious disease that is beginning to affect neighboring states as well. Take another example: the current concern about whether or not the US economy is entering a recession and, if so, what to do about it. By and large, causes and cures for recessions are fairly well understood. For the US economy, the doctor would prescribe some of Mr. Greenspan's medicine but not much of Mr. Bush's. The reason is that Mr. Greenspan's medicine – cuts in interest rates – can be implemented and take effect relatively fast whereas Mr. Bush's medicine requires the approval of some 535 other "doctors," namely the members of the US Congress. While Congress haggles over when and where and how much, the economy, meanwhile, can go into a full recession making the problem worse. And by the time the medicine is approved and kicks in, the patient may already have recovered. No doubt, at times tax cuts can be exactly the right medicine but usually not for temporary economy-wide slumps such as the one the US is now facing. Tax cuts are medicine ordinarily reserved for different kinds of problems. A few years ago the US and other governments started to auction off portions of the electromagnetic spectrum (for wireless communications and the like). This used to be given away free for the asking, but not always to the ones best qualified to make efficient use of this resource. Economists counseled that spectrum rights be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Instead of government giving away a valuable resource that belongs to all citizens, spectrum bidders now have to pay handsomely. One effect is that citizens now should need to pay fewer taxes because the highly successful auctions have been generating billions upon billions of dollars in government revenues. Here the patient made a successful life style change and is much the better for it. There are other parallels between physicians and economists. For instance, if you experience a serious automobile accident, your fault or not, you may be in the hospital for a very long period of time of possibly slow and painful recovery. You may indeed never be fully restored. The same is true of  economies that sometimes are involved in serious economic crashes, their fault or not, requiring slow and painful recovery. Some never seem to recover fully. Another similarity is that physicians sometimes need to experiment awhile until they find the proper dosage to which a particular patient responds well. Likewise, Mr. Greenspan and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve Bank sometimes need to tinker a bit before they find the right amount of interest rate increases or decreases to help the economy along. I would not be entirely truthful if I did not also mention that physicians sometimes goof, amputating one leg when it should have the other or some such mistake. Economists sometimes also goof, prescribing a medicine that nearly kills the patient. Fortunately, most of the time the fault is not with the physician or the economist but with inadequate knowledge that requires sometimes dangerous experimentation or with the patient not truly understanding and following the doctor's orders.  But there is at least one big difference: the medical community receives a lot more research money than economists do. It is as if society believes that economic research is not important when, in fact, it has provided the basis for the most astounding generalized prosperity any society has ever experienced in the history of humankind. So, next time you meet an economist, think of us as "doctors," too. Dr. J. Brauer is Professor of Economics at Augusta State University's College of Business Administration. He can best be reached via his web site (http://www.aug.edu/~sbajmb).