My email to Greg Mankiw.
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As a computer scientist with an interest in the Philosophy of science, I am sad to see this title for an article in the NYT.
For economics to be a science, it would need to have two capabilities, which it does not possess unlike the core sciences: experimentation and verification.
<stuff deleted>
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Postscript: I love Krugman's elegant response to Raj Chetty's article. Elegant is the word for it. Note the use of the word 'maybe'. The reason why it is 'maybe' a science is that it is based on 'hard data'. The reason why it is 'maybe' not a science is that it is not based on reproducible experiments and verification.
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Maybe Economics Is A Science, But Many Economists Are Not Scientists
Raj Chetty stands up valiantly for the honor of his and my profession, arguing that economics is too a science in which careful research is used to falsify some hypotheses and lend credibility to others. And in many ways I agree: there is a lot of good research in economics, maybe more than ever as the focus has shifted somewhat from theoretical models loosely inspired by observation — which, as he suggests, was my forte — to nitty-gritty empirical work.
Postscript: I love Krugman's elegant response to Raj Chetty's article. Elegant is the word for it. Note the use of the word 'maybe'. The reason why it is 'maybe' a science is that it is based on 'hard data'. The reason why it is 'maybe' not a science is that it is not based on reproducible experiments and verification.
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Maybe Economics Is A Science, But Many Economists Are Not Scientists
Raj Chetty stands up valiantly for the honor of his and my profession, arguing that economics is too a science in which careful research is used to falsify some hypotheses and lend credibility to others. And in many ways I agree: there is a lot of good research in economics, maybe more than ever as the focus has shifted somewhat from theoretical models loosely inspired by observation — which, as he suggests, was my forte — to nitty-gritty empirical work.