An interview with Professor Erik Angner of Stockholm University as part of the Humanities and Social Change Centre at the University of Cambridge‘s series on expertise and COVID-19.
Erik Angner is a philosopher and an economist writing on behavioral economics, economists as experts, measurement of happiness and wellbeing, Hayek, and the nature of preferences among other topics. Recently he has commented on the need for epistemic humility and the uniqueness of the Swedish response to the pandemic.
The interview with Anna Alexandrova and Michael Kenny ranges across issues including:
- Who gets included in powerful expert groups, who gets sidelined and why?
- How can we explain the current dominance of epidemiology to the exclusion of other areas of expertise?
- What values, and conceptions of the relationship of the citizen to the state, are implicit in some behavioural science ideas, such as nudge theory?
Listen to the interview (external link to Humanities and Social Change Centre at the University of Cambridge)
Photo credit: Niklas Björling/ Stockholm University