728 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 6 Feb \ on: Is Studying Economic Data "Doing Economics"? econ
Doing economics is such an odd term but wouldn't aggregating economic data for the purpose of analysis be "doing" economics similar to the way collecting the resulting data from an experiment would be "doing" science?
I don't like the term either. The point of the article is that unless the work is guided by economic theory it is not "doing economics". Data work in service of demonstrating an economic relationship would be part of "doing economics", I think.
I'd say the author was trying to emphasize that hypothesis formation in economics is different than in the natural sciences. In economics, theory comes first, whereas in the natural sciences observation comes first.
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