Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, hit the headlines last week with his confession that even he could not understand much of the material which pension providers give to customers. Less noticed, however, was a speech he gave the previous week at a dinner organised in aid of Children in Need on the fashionable theme of diversity.
The concept is dear to the heart of the liberal elite. Company boards, public institutions, all must embrace it without question. Each must have its “appropriate” quota of under-represented groups – every group, in fact, except white working class men. Mass immigration and open borders should be welcomed on the grounds that this makes society more diverse, which is unequivocally a Good Thing.
Haldane, one of the most original economists around, puts forward an altogether smarter set of arguments for diversity. A very deep seated human instinct is to be very wary of anything which is different. For much of our history, we have lived in small hunter-gatherer communities of 100 people or less. Groups of this size were very vulnerable to events which could make them extinct. The principal threats were conflict and disease, and the principal bearers of these were strangers. So it can be very sensible to prefer people who are similar to you and to distrust the unknown. As Haldane points out, this is “ecologically rational” behaviour.
But decisions which are rational for the individual can have consequences which are, collectively, bad. It is perfectly rational for everyone to head to the exits if the fire alarm sounds in the theatre. But the collective consequences are potentially catastrophic.
Haldane notes that economists call this an externality problem. He argues that a certain amount of diversity can generate positive externalities for society and the economy as a whole. Taking a very broad sweep of history, he cites Ancient Greece, medieval Italian cities and the London of Elizabeth I as examples of cosmopolitan, diverse cultures in which creativity flourished. Shakespeare was very much the product of that latter era, when England was opening up the world. And diversity, Haldane argues, in addition offers protection against the dangers of “group think”.
Some of his other examples are less convincing. He cites the results of the Harvard economist Alberto Alesina that a 1 per cent increase in the population arising from skilled immigrants raises long-run output by 2 per cent. But the point here is surely that they are skilled rather than that they are immigrants. And, incredibly, Haldane gives the Monetary Policy Committee as an example of successful diversity.
Cultivating creativity requires what Haldane calls cognitive diversity, which may not be related at all to ethnic or gender diversity. Cambridge in the middle of last century consisted almost entirely of white, upper class men. Yet Keynes in economics, Wittgenstein in philosophy and, most important of all, Crick in biology generated world-changing ideas.
Haldane’s speech is a powerful counterweight to the tick-box mentality which currently dominates the thinking on diversity in policy circles.
Paul Ormerod
As published in City AM on Wednesday 24th May
Image: All the colours by Garry Knight licensed under CC by 2.0
