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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

#81

Post by samvher »

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…

I'm not quite sure how to place your comment, maybe because the term credibility revolution is new to me. Yes, RCTs are used to test and provide evidence, and the null results can be very informative. But I think the external validity point made in the article is absolutely fair. Note that I work in RCTs so I'm definitely not opposed to the approach, but I think there are still a lot of improvements to be made on this - in the field people really do generalize findings quite aggressively. This is "practical" because you need to make decisions when setting up new projects and RCTs are incredibly laborious, expensive and take a lot of time to complete. I'm also surprised about your remark about deworming because it is generally touted as one of the big wins in the field of RCTs, by the RCTs people - Michael Kremer frequently mentions it and so do Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee in their courses on EdX. The concerns that you refer to don't tend to be mentioned (I think they should be!).

Totally agree that Esther Duflo is fantastic and that the contributions of these people go beyond just RCTs, e.g. Esther Duflo's work on the returns of education in Indonesia.

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

#83

Post by puranjay »

squaresmile wrote: post #52
amznthrowaway4 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It speaks horribly of Hacker News readers that xyxxy2020's ignorant nonsense has been repeatedly upvoted.

Looks like it's actually downvoted now. Anyway, I think it's more correct to say "It speaks horribly of Hacker News readers _economics knowledge_." There are some topics here in which the quality of comments is quite poor but it's probably unreasonable to expect a group of people (specifically "good hackers") to be knowledgeable about _everything_. It is what it is and you just have to figure out which topic to avoid…

HN has an anti humanities/social science bias that often rears its ugly head in discussions such as these.

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

#86

Post by Animats »

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…

The trouble with economics, especially macroeconomics, as a science is that it lacks good predictive power. Science is prediction, not explanation. Economic forecasting ought to work at least as well as weather forecasting, and it doesn't.

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

#87

Post by grandmczeb »

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,…

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.

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

#88

Post by bildung »

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.

India is quite a bunch of people :) If the academic output per capita is the same worldwide, then India alone would contribute 17% of the worldwide output of financial/economic publications.

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

#89

Post by isoskeles »

redis_mlc wrote: post #57
Androider wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One day when I was a junior medical student, a very important Boston surgeon visited the school and delivered a great treatise on a large number of patients who had undergone successful operations for vascular reconstruction. At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly asked, “Do you have any controls?” Well, the great surgeon drew himself up to his full height, hit the desk, and said,…

Let me guess. The young student was an HN pedant.

That young student's name... Albert Einstein.

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

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,…

[deleted]
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