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696 sats \ 5 replies \ @cryotosensei 6 Feb \ on: Is Studying Economic Data "Doing Economics"? econ
On first impulse, I felt that Frank Shostak is splitting hairs. Isn’t the collation and curation of data part and parcel of the process of testing a hypothesis? I thought he was thinking of doing data as grunt work and something beneath his level.
Upon further thought, I am thinking maybe he wants to distance his work from the bare bones of data collection. With the prevalence of LLM and AI tools out there, perhaps the human input involved in data collection is weighed down by comparison, so he doesn’t want his work to be undermined as a result
Isn’t the collation and curation of data part and parcel of the process of testing a hypothesis?
Not in the Austrian tradition. This is a fundamental point they make about how economics differs from the natural sciences. Instead, economic theory is inherently axiomatic and follows deductively from those premises. In that way, economics is more like mathematics (or is a branch of mathematics) than what people generally refer to as "science". (Although, both econ and math are sciences.)
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I appreciate the Austrian perspective greatly, but I confess that I am not well schooled in their thinking. How do Austrians handle situations in which a quantitative measurement is needed to make a prediction, like a demand or a supply elasticity? Do they not consider that part of economics proper, like how engineering is considered separate from physics?
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like a demand or a supply elasticity
This is actually my main gripe with the way they talk. Estimating elasticities is absolutely part of economics proper and they acknowledge that. It's easy to miss that, though, when reading pieces like this, even though the author never actually says anything to the contrary.
like how engineering is considered separate from physics?
There are a couple of interesting parallels to that.
- Finance, even if rooted in Austrian theory, is usually considered a separate discipline from economics.
- While still being considered part of economics, Austrians have an interesting perspective that empirical work is best understood as doing economic history.
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Today I learnt! Haha
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The Austrians preceded the behavioral economists!
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