Why democracy and its people require experts they can trust

A lot of people who voted for Brexit did so against the advice of myriad experts. It was hardly a surprise — we need new venues for new voices, says Jean Pisani-Ferry

Last month, I wrote a commentary asking why voters in the UK supported leaving the EU, defying the overwhelming weight of expert opinion warning of the major economic costs of Brexit.

I observed that many voters in the UK and elsewhere are angry at economic experts. They say that the experts failed to foresee the financial crisis of 2008, put efficiency first in their policy advice, and blindly assumed the losers from their policy prescriptions could be compensated in some unspecified way. I argued that experts should be humbler and more attentive to distributional issues.