Dani Rodrik at Princeton writes:  A consensus among economists can arise for both good and bad reasons. Sometimes a consensus is innocuous enough, as when you hear economists argue that one ignores the role of incentives at one’s peril.

Can anyone really disagree with that? Sometimes it is restricted to a particular episode and is based on evidence accumulated after the fact: Yes, the Soviet economic system was hugely inefficient; yes, the Obama fiscal stimulus of 2009 did reduce unemployment.

But when a consensus forms around the universal applicability of a specific model, the critical assumptions  of which are likely to be violated in many settings, we have a problem.  Consensus Among Economists