Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
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Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#2I'm surprised there seems to be have been no HN discussion on this years Economics prize. Or are my HS search skills lacking?
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#3I'm surprised there seems to be have been no HN discussion on this years Economics prize. Or are my HS search skills lacking?
I haven't found any, either.
This is a shame because economics is already a computational discipline and increasingly so. It can be of interest to the HN crowd.
There is an awful lot of programming done by people that are not professional programmers. As an economist myself, I think code have become so central to our profession that we can no longer afford to ignore software engineering best practices. Conversely, there may be quite a few topics in computational economics that interest programmers.
For instance, an awful lot of macroeconomics - including to an extent Romer's sub-field, endogenous growth theory - is essentially programming in Dynare [0] and doing computer simulations.
Nordhaus got the prize for developing (quite basic, actually) simulation models that integrate the economic systems and environmental systems. See for instance there [1].
Micro-simulation is of course a big area where programming and economics meet - you can follow development on github [2, 3]. This is code that has an enormous impact on society, as it is used as a basis to evaluate the effects of policies.
Econometrics, aka statistics for economics, is also a big area where programmers could contribute to economic research. There is a big push to adapt ML techniques to solve economists' problems, eg Athey's research [4].
[1] https://sites.google.com/site/williamdnordhaus/dice-rice
[2] https://github.com/openfisca
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#4People interested by the use of Python in economic research should check out QuantEcon [0], a project to develop tools and courses for computational economics [1] in Python and Julia
[1] A fancy expression to say "using programming to solve economic models"
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#5People interested by the use of Python in economic research should check out QuantEcon [0], a project to develop tools and courses for computational economics [1] in Python and Julia [0] https://quantecon.org/ [1] A fancy expression to say "using programming to solve economic models"
Yeah, and Economics Nobel laureate Thomas Sargent is a Julia programming convert (he even gave the JuliaCon 2016 keynote, video embedded below:)
https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/thomas-sargent.html
EDIT to add: I should say that Thomas Sargent is one of the founders of QuantEcon (cited by OP), that's why I'm bringing this up here.
Another resource on Julia in Computational Economics:
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#6People interested by the use of Python in economic research should check out QuantEcon [0], a project to develop tools and courses for computational economics [1] in Python and Julia [0] https://quantecon.org/ [1] A fancy expression to say "using programming to solve economic models"
(Cofounded by another Nobel laureate.)
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#7> he tried to use Mathematica to share one of his studies in a way that anyone could explore every detail of his data and methods. It didn’t work. He says that Mathematica’s owner, Wolfram Research, made it too difficult to share his work in a way that didn’t require other people to use the proprietary software, too
Sometimes I wonder where Mathematica would be if it were open sourced lets say in 2010. It had such a head start over Python.
Interestingly, Mathematica interop with Python is basically non-existent today, even worse than it was in the past. Short term moat building destroying long term viability.
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#8People interested by the use of Python in economic research should check out QuantEcon [0], a project to develop tools and courses for computational economics [1] in Python and Julia [0] https://quantecon.org/ [1] A fancy expression to say "using programming to solve economic models"
> A fancy expression to say "using programming to solve economic models"
That fancy expression existed well before the birth of programming.
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#9I'm surprised there seems to be have been no HN discussion on this years Economics prize. Or are my HS search skills lacking?
I haven't found any, either. This is a shame because economics is already a computational discipline and increasingly so. It can be of interest to the HN crowd. There is an awful lot of programming done by people that are not professional programmers. As an economist myself, I think code have become so central to our profession that we can no longer afford to ignore software engineering best practices. Conversely, th…
This is a great comment.
I believe the NY Fed has open source economic models in Julia, too.
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't found any, either. This is a shame because economics is already a computational discipline and increasingly so. It can be of interest to the HN crowd. There is an awful lot of programming done by people that are not professional programmers. As an economist myself, I think code have become so central to our profession that we can no longer afford to ignore software engineering best practices. Conversely, th…
This is a great comment. I believe the NY Fed has open source economic models in Julia, too.