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This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

economist.com

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Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#101

Post by blix »

billfruit wrote: post #91
samvher wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those models aren't worth much if you don't test them, so these efforts will have to go hand in hand. The way it tends to go now is RCT -> try to explain findings by hypothesizing about mechanisms -> think about an RCT that can test this hypothesis -> repeat. It's a slow and expensive process and not always successful, but I would say that it's progress.

I would say testing is a small part of building models: building models should essentially be driven by theory, not by experiments.

The space of incorrect-but-reasonable models is infinitely larger than the space of correct models. The way to distinguish between the two is experiment. Experiment is therefore the much more important side of the balance.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#102

Post by grandmczeb »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #99
grandmczeb wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The human body (and biology more generally) is fractal-like in its complexity. One day we may be able to model things accurately enough to not require experimental work, but probably not in our lifetime.

Modelling the basics of a human lung isn't all that difficult. You can see the effects of vaping on an enclosed space just by having the smoke pulled into an enclosed space like they used to do for cigarettes. That would give you substances created though the vaping process and likely to stick in the lungs. Longer term effects are drastically harder obviously as it doesn't take into account the cleaning mechanisms in…

Models are useful tools, but at the end of the day you’re not going to get a conclusive answer to a question like “what are the impacts of vaping on human health?” without looking at a real life human. At least at current levels of scientific understanding, being able to plug a chemical into an equation and pop out a complete description of the effects (my interpretation of what the gp is asking for) is a bit of a pipe dream.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#103

Post by SiempreViernes »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #42
kortilla wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a bit like medicine: we're not going to stop treating people just because we don't understand the mechanism of action and can't guarantee that it will work. Yet medicine actually focuses on scientific measurement of effects. They don’t just throw their hands up and go, “experiments that affect people’s lives are too hard.”

Except there is a direct, causal link between treatment and life and death, or at least quality of life. Economic or social studies are a lot more nebulous.

Seems weird to accept that "quality of life" is a straightforward measure, but insists nothing of the like can be created for social studies.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#104

Post by bakuninsbart »

billfruit wrote: post #67
jerf wrote: post #21

These critics should spend some time speaking to the medical research community. These aren't new questions. It kinda reveals the deep underlying assumptions; "of course we can know the results of these interventions in advance, so we must base our ethics on that"... ok, but if you already know the effects, why are you testing them? You're testing them because you don't know. Unfortunately, there's no royal road to s…

I am somewhat bothered about the reverse scenario. For example e-cigarettes, some people are eager to quote statistical data on it, but I feel we should be able to state if e-cigarettes are harmful or not from a purely theoritical standpoint, an explanation on how it interacts with the chemistry of the human body and say it is harmful or not. We didn't send the man to the Moon on the basis of statistical experiments,…

> I am fearful that depending on experiments would lead to the same dire credibility issues that plague experimental psychology.

Economics already has huge credibility problems.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#105

Post by bakuninsbart »

whatshisface wrote: post #65
inception44 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abhijit Banerjee was her doctoral advisor. He tutored her not the other way around. If you get any chance to read their famous book Poor Economics, you will find almost 70% RCTs were conducted in India. Classical Indian bias.

What is it with India and economics? I have personally known many Indian economists, I see a lot of books written in Hindi about finance and other economic topics, and apparently many studies are conducted in India. There is something going on here, maybe a trend that will be remarked on a century from now.

I guess there is a bias that keeps perpetuating itself. I've made the same experience with Italians. On the other hand, here in Germany economics seem to be quite niche (and terrible), while our CS, Math and Engineering research is world-class.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#106

Post by SiempreViernes »

hangonhn wrote: post #6
xyzzy2020 wrote: post #3

Totally bonkers: economists using science to approach "social science" issues. Social sciences should be ashamed that this is not the norm, we should all be startled and surprised that this is a new thing and evidently people have just been using a system of high-fives and good wishes to solve the world's social problems.

Before we pile on the social sciences, maybe someone familiar with them can tell us why RCTs are so hard to do. There are likely other issues involved that make RCTs very difficult -- I'm guessing some ethical issues at least. I doubt social scientists and economists are just a bunch of idiots or charlatans. Likewise, the recent breakthrough wouldn't be such a breakthrough if it had been easier. I don't have an Econo…

I guess RCTs are complicated to do because you often can't generate homogeneous control and treatment groups, so you are either forced to laboriously measure every relevant aspect of each group to standardise. Or to otherwise invent clever ways to do your treatment that ensures that most of the effects from unavoidable differences cancel out.

The thing is, these complication doesn't explain why nobody overcame them until Kremer, Duflo e. al. started their experiments in the 1990's. Their work appears to be a simple adaption of methods from other fields to studies in developmental economics, not any sort of technological development. (This is one of the earliest papers cited in the motivation provided by Nobel foundation: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/app.1.1.112 it does some linear regression at the most)

With creation of new technology ruled out as the blocker for performing the experiment, you are basically left with internal and external sociological explanations.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#107

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

krapht wrote: post #54
plntd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics has an identity crisis. It is trying to be a science when it is an art/humanity. Rather than embracing it's nature it is trying to be what it is not. It's like Christianity trying to be a science via creation science. It simply does not work.

Thanks for this glib comment, it must be true since you asserted it. Frankly what I find most annoying about this comment is the implicit claim that humans are so complex that we can't possibly study it; that our existing scientific method is inadequate to describe economics. Unlike any art economics can make predictions, and we can test the validity of such predictions. That our models are insufficient right now doe…

Wow.

I recommend you read the pretense of knowledge.

Economics cannot test predictions because you can't run a city in a lab. You cant control for any variables. In real science, lack of control would disqualify your test immediately.

The arrogance on the field and the charlatanism knows no bounds. No wonder they continue to crash societies... yet go on claiming "no one could have foreseen that crisis"

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#108

Post by cf141q5325 »

jtms wrote: post #61
ralph84 wrote: post #9

Worth noting that The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is not an actual Nobel Prize. It was established by a central bank so they could award people who justify the existence of central banks.

Yes, it is technically separate from the other Nobel prizes, but no one treats it any differently than the rest of them.

I mean quite a few people treat it differently, you just have to look as far as some of Nobels decedents. Wyattpeak linked the article a bit below.

>It is a deceptive utilisation of the institution of the Nobel Prize and what it represents.

https://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/the-nobel-family-disso...

Not to mention one of its awardees, Hayek.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1974/hay...

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#109

Post by pmezard »

billfruit wrote: post #67
jerf wrote: post #21

These critics should spend some time speaking to the medical research community. These aren't new questions. It kinda reveals the deep underlying assumptions; "of course we can know the results of these interventions in advance, so we must base our ethics on that"... ok, but if you already know the effects, why are you testing them? You're testing them because you don't know. Unfortunately, there's no royal road to s…

I am somewhat bothered about the reverse scenario. For example e-cigarettes, some people are eager to quote statistical data on it, but I feel we should be able to state if e-cigarettes are harmful or not from a purely theoritical standpoint, an explanation on how it interacts with the chemistry of the human body and say it is harmful or not. We didn't send the man to the Moon on the basis of statistical experiments,…

> but I feel we should be able to state if e-cigarettes are harmful or not from a purely theoritical standpoint, an explanation on how it interacts with the chemistry of the human body and say it is harmful or not.

I agree with the sentiment but the truth is ballistics is several order of magnitude simpler than biology/biochemistry. I find medicine fascinating, but the more I learn about it the more I am astonished at the huge mismatch between perception of the field and what we actually know. And have always more respect for practitioners.

> Paracetamol was first made in 1877.[21] It is the most commonly used medication for pain and fever in both the United States and Europe.

> How it works is not entirely clear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#110

Post by ummwhat »

jerf wrote: post #21

These critics should spend some time speaking to the medical research community. These aren't new questions. It kinda reveals the deep underlying assumptions; "of course we can know the results of these interventions in advance, so we must base our ethics on that"... ok, but if you already know the effects, why are you testing them? You're testing them because you don't know. Unfortunately, there's no royal road to s…

I think what you're missing is that economics has a serious case of physics envy. They like to imagine that their handful of reductionist principles can model a scenario as well as Newton's laws can model n bodies. The experiments are only needed to fine tune a handful of parameters.

What is represented by this pivot towards emperical testing everything is a concession that there are no universal economic laws from which outcomes can be derived, just an ad hoc corpus of facts. I see why they don't want to give up.

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