748 sats \ 5 replies \ @SimpleStacker 6 Feb \ on: Is Studying Economic Data "Doing Economics"? econ
Yes, it is "doing economics". To say otherwise would be to render the entire field of economics unfalsifiable. Even historical analysis is a kind of data analysis, except you're doing a deep dive on a handful of data points rather than looking for statistical regularities across a large number of data points.
It's true that economists aren't measuring unchanging laws of nature like a physicist would. But the underlying assumption is that there is enough regularity in human behavior that these quantitative relationships are useful for making predictions about the future or for testing the validity of economic theories.
We've touched on this elsewhere, but I don't think it's right to say that theory needs to be empirically testable to be falsifiable.
In the same way that mathematics is falsifiable, so are deduced economic theories. Finding a contradiction is how that kind of scientific theory is falsified. As with mathematics, there is also the question of whether the assumptions that theories are based on are appropriate for the situation.
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Fair enough. I retract my statement about falsifiability. Still, even a solid economic theory often requires empirical measurements in order to make predictions, e.g. supply and demand elasticities. In that sense, I would still argue that data work is an indispensable part of economic analysis. I get where the author is coming from, but I also think it's a bit pedantic. Does anyone really ever claim to do economic data analysis apart from a theoretical framework, even if the framework is implicit?
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There are people who don't realize they're bringing theory into their data analysis. You might here them say things like "let the data speak for themselves". They fancy themselves as being ideologically neutral, but they tend to just not understand the ideology they're implicitly assuming.
I get where the author is coming from, but I also think it's a bit pedantic.
I agree
a solid economic theory often requires empirical measurements
also agree
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True. And I often see economists come up with a crazy model that, with the right choice of parameters, can fit the data and ergo "the model is supported by the data". Well, no, if the model is inherently flawed then it doesn't really matter if it can fit the data, it's not going to be useful for predicting or understanding the world
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*hear
I hate catching typos after the edit window is closed.
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