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经济学家和非经济学家应当如何相处

Mar 9, 2021 Dani Rodrik

发自剑桥—经济学家们从不惮于谈论那些被历史学、社会学或政治学等学科视为自家范畴的重大问题：奴隶制对当代美国社会有什么长期影响？为什么有些社区会展现出高于其他社区的社会信任度？如何解释近年右翼民粹主义的兴起？

在解答上述以及其他许多非经济问题时，经济学家已经大大逾越了他们关注供求关系的老本行。不过这种跨越学科界限的做法可不总那么受欢迎。其他学者会批评（而且通常是正确的）经济学家不屑于熟悉相关学科的现有工作，还会抱怨（这再次是正确的）经济学界那种不友善的学术文化。充斥着插嘴和逼问的经济学研讨会在外人看来更像是宗教裁判所，而不是同行交流学术成果和探究新思想的论坛。

然而这类紧张关系的最重要来源或许是经济学家的研究方法。经济学家依靠统计工具来证明某个特定潜在因素对考察目标存在“因果”作用，但这种常常遭到误解的方法可能引发经济学家和其他学者之间无休止且毫无益处的冲突。

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Joe Ryan Mar 14, 2021

The differing perspectives that Prof. Sachs identifies can perhaps be characterized philosophically.

Empirical research in economics consists largely of (1) positing an hypothesis about structure, (2) collecting quantitative information about socioeconomic events, and then (3) calculating average relationships between the data to quantify the hypothesized structure. The quantified structure is useful because it shows how actors will move in response to stimuli, potentially allowing them to be maneuvered.

The philosophy of this research might be called "idealism," the notion that events emanate from an idea, namely the hypothesized structure. In other words, there is a universe, but we in our academic cave can only observe the shadows of it that are thrown on our wall when the universe's structure is illuminated by a stochastic light. Fortunately, God's dice are not loaded. So, if we keep our research methods unbiassed, we can average away the random flickering and infer the structure.

Civil conflict, to take Prof. Sachs's example, can be seen as an ideal type of event that characterizes a range of actual past events and that is hypothesized to arise from (to be caused by) a structure that researchers can try to identify.

A possible alternative philosophy of events is that, rather than being the result of unknowably random variations around an ideal mean, they may also arise from differences in the intent of the actors involved. This approach can be characterized as "realism," to emphasize that, as distinct from "idealism," it isn't based on the existence of an ideal structure. (Obviously, the two terms "realism" and "idealism" are used in other ways in many other contexts.)

Realism creates a problem for social science theory. A prominent formulation of one problem is the Lucas Critique, according to which economic actors know the current models as well as the social scientists do and can benefit from knowing in advance what actions will be taken within or because of the models. Actions of these actors come from outside the models and rob them of predictive power.

Civil conflict, to take that example again, may arise because sociopaths intuit that their potential opponents can't quite believe or react to, in a timely way, how far outside the guard rails (the structure) the sociopath will go.

So, realism isn't surprised when prediction fails; it has a correspondingly lower appreciation of the benefit-cost ratio of the idealistic research agenda. This might partially characterize historians' appreciation of economists' methods in history.

Statutory minimum wage rates and the euro currency may be other examples of initiatives that, according to some hypotheses, shouldn't be undertaken and will fail, or alternatively that are valuable enough to be worth trying and that may themselves change the rules of the game in ways that both accommodate them and are beneficial.

Realism can perhaps be summed up as the notion that things — especially big, important things — don't happen for reasons; indeed, things that are highly notable often seem to be unreasonable. They happen, however, because people do them.
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Procyon Mukherjee Mar 14, 2021

Thomas Sowell once said that the first principle of Economics is that scarcity exists and the first principle of politics is to ignore it.

I am in awe to witness the economic experiments of political economies, almost none of which is fully endorsed by economists of all beliefs and the same have either failed or succeeded (measuring what they intended to achieve itself is sometimes mired in controversy) to lift large populations out of depravity; how little of what constitutes economic discourse touches the policy making institutions and their execution toolkit, so much intellect that goes into Economics as a subject for guiding economic agenda actually ends up stoking debate for the learned community only. It is sad that the political acrobatics is about pushing this debate out of the window while economists must bring their act together to make their theories be made simple for the uninitiated to understand what they mean and do for their own good.
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Adolfo Villanueva Mar 12, 2021

I'd say there are two main problems with economist's methodologies.

First, economist use statistical tools (mostly simple regression analysis or ANOVA) usually without much care for the conceptual factors behind their results. In hard science and engineering, no such analysis is accepted without at least a conceptual reasoning of what might be the "mechanism" (teleconnections, in climate science) behind the results.

Second, economics is heavily tainted with both ideology and "sector" interests, all too often analysis are guided to some preferred results.

That's not economists fault, it's a characteristic of the object of study. Nobody cares where my results lead, there is no gain or lose in them. On the other hand, going neocon or progressive moves tons of money one way or the other, and economists are merely human...
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Eric Johnson Mar 10, 2021

Okay, nice work Dr. Rodrik.
I have criticisms of the field of economics beyond the social sciences.
Here's one: I think, in general, the field fails to account for and understand code, including monetary code, in a physics, evolution and complexity context. I submit this is a fundamental knowledge omission that renders much of economics inaccurate.

Dr. Rodrik, if you or any PS columnist wants to engage in a civil written discussion re code, and in particular, the current efficacy of monetary code, y'all have my email address.
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Paul Griesbach Mar 9, 2021

Definition of a dysfunctional economy: Where you can make more money from money than producing.
- Michael Public Mar 10, 2021
  
  Making money from money is called investing. The Dutch, British, French and Americans have used this to good effect during the last century or two. Those who instead opened factories like the Germans, Japanese, Mexicans and Chinese have had to work a lot harder for their money. I do agree is it dysfunctional though...
  - Paul Griesbach Mar 10, 2021
    
    In particular, I was thinking about what is called financial engineering creating wealth, actually being liquidation of wealth, of entire corporations. The whole idea is to extract wealth from the real economy, not create it.
    A new reply to this comment has been posted.
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