This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by jerf » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

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 science knowledge, and, yeah, that means that some people are going to fail to get positive interventions, and some people are going to get negative interventions. Either that, or nobody gets anything and we just keep blundering on in ignorance. There is no answer where nobody takes any risks and everybody gets the good stuff guaranteed.

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

#22

Post by sbierwagen » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:41 PM UTC

duxut_staglatz wrote: post #15

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.

Is there nothing between RCTs and "high-fives" to estimate causal effects? Economists seem to run awfully long journal articles if they all boil down to high fives.

There are many philosophy journals filled with long articles that also have no causal connection with reality. Why would you assume any given academic journal has to be publishing things that make sense, or are useful?

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

#23

Post by QuesnayJr » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:41 PM UTC

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.

Define "science". For most topics in economics it's basically impossible to an RCT. You can't say "Let's turn the US into a centrally planned economy, and see what happens." RCT based macroeconomics, or trade economics are basically impossible. Instead people have long relied on observational data, and did the best they could to handle the issues this caused.

RCTs didn't start with Duflo. (Duflo isn't even the first to win for RCTs -- Kahneman and Smith won in 2002 for experiments.) Experimental economics dates back to the 70s, but it always suffered from the same problem as psychology -- most experiments were conducted on students, and the interventions were always small-scale.

RCTs in development economics are much bigger scale because there are rich NGOs willing to spend big money on measuring the efficacy of interventions, and willing to work with economists to do it. This is not without controversy. A development RCT involves an economist from a rich country flying to a poor country, and then running an experiment on the inhabitants of that country. Not everyone thinks that's okay.

The RCTs also rely on the fact that economists come from coun

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

#24

Post by QuesnayJr » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

sbierwagen wrote: post #22

duxut_staglatz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there nothing between RCTs and "high-fives" to estimate causal effects? Economists seem to run awfully long journal articles if they all boil down to high fives.

There are many philosophy journals filled with long articles that also have no causal connection with reality. Why would you assume any given academic journal has to be publishing things that make sense, or are useful?

Why would you not? I don't even like philosophy, and I wouldn't assume they're just publishing nonsense.

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

#25

Post by dwoozle » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

notafraudster wrote: post #5

Esther Duflo is the most obviously deserving Nobel Prize in Economics pick in decades. Major substantive contributions to development economics coupled with being absolutely the vanguard of the credibility revolution. The article seems to motivate criticism of RCTs in only the barest manner: "what of external validity?" No shit, Sherlock, which is why the credibility revolution also argues for frequent and cross-cont…

Esther Duflo is so good that she got her husband the Nobel Prize. If Banerjee hadn’t married her and started coauthoring so much with her, Sendhil Mullainathan definitely would have been the third winner.

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

#26

Post by dwoozle » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:55 PM UTC

QuesnayJr wrote: post #24

sbierwagen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many philosophy journals filled with long articles that also have no causal connection with reality. Why would you assume any given academic journal has to be publishing things that make sense, or are useful?

Why would you not? I don't even like philosophy, and I wouldn't assume they're just publishing nonsense.

Because of a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.

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

#27

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 10:00 PM UTC

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.

No, not really worth noting.

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

#28

Post by leg100 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

AcerbicZero wrote: post #8

There is no Nobel prize for economists, specifically anyway. There is a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, but that was created in 1968 by Sweden's central bank, and has nothing to do with Alfred Nobel other than being from Sweden and "borrowing" his name. I believe the Nobel foundation now manages that award, but there are still only 5 "real" Noble prizes.

Nobody doubts it's the weakest prize of the lot (alongside the peace prize, although you'll probably remind me that's not real either).

They seem to be perennially awarded to academic staff at the university of Chicago for coming up for a new way of pricing something or interpreting the markets. Nothing earth shattering or outside the realm of orthodox economics (beyond a few exceptions such as game theory).

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

#29

Post by bjourne » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 10:04 PM UTC

duxut_staglatz wrote: post #15

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.

Is there nothing between RCTs and "high-fives" to estimate causal effects? Economists seem to run awfully long journal articles if they all boil down to high fives.

Piketty's Capital in the 21st century would be an example of something in between. His main hypothesis is that unless there is some intervention wealth accumulates until almost all of it is concentrated among just a few. He uses lots and lots of statistics to support his theory. He tells us that it happens but is unable to tell us exactly why.

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

#30

Post by ralph84 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

idoh wrote: post #16

AcerbicZero wrote: post #8

There is no Nobel prize for economists, specifically anyway. There is a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, but that was created in 1968 by Sweden's central bank, and has nothing to do with Alfred Nobel other than being from Sweden and "borrowing" his name. I believe the Nobel foundation now manages that award, but there are still only 5 "real" Noble prizes.

More accurate to say that there are five "original" ones and then one added in later. It seems that at this point it has equal standing, in that the Nobel foundation admins it, and it is presented in the same ceremony.

The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, 57 years before Alfred Nobel was born. He was aware of the field of economics and didn't think it was worthy of a prize.

Fields such as mathematics and philosophy were also around in Nobel's time and he didn't think they were worthy of a prize either. The difference is those fields aren't associated with an organization that literally prints money to buy their way in.