The discipline of economics is in better shape today than it was in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Here are five reasons why:
1. Now, economists test their theories. In the 1960s, the majority of published economics papers were entirely theoretical. Even in the 1980s, the typical top-10 journal published mostly theoretical work (reference here). Today, top journals like American Economics Review, the Journal of Political Economy and the Quarterly Journal of Economics are overwhelmingly dominated by papers that put theory to the test.
There is more data available than ever before, econometric software has improved immeasurably, and the cost of data, software and computing power has plummeted. Economists are doing more and better empirical research, so applied work is crowding out the second-rate theorizing once common in academic journals.
This is a good thing, for three reasons.
First, until a theory has been tested, there is no way of knowing whether or not it describes reality.
Second, theory scales. The same theory can be used to explain people's labour supply decisions in Manitoba and Mongolia. Empirical work, however, is particular: because Manitobans and Mongolians live in different environments and face different constraints, there is a value to carrying out individual studies of each countries' labour markets.
Third, policy makers often need to know "how much", for example, how much will labour supply change in response to a change in the after-tax wage rate. The increased volume of empirical research is a good thing because multiple studies using a variety of data sets and time periods may be needed to get a reliable estimate of the size of any given economic parameter.
I find deep and insightful theory far more satisfying than most empirical research. Yet because a marginal empirical piece is generally of greater value than a marginal theoretical piece, I celebrate the rise of empiricism.
2. Now, economists are better at establishing causality. Back in 1980s, McCloskey could, with some justification, take aim at economists who ignored the economic or policy significance of their research, and focussed solely on statistical significance (here and here).
Mere statistical significance doesn't cut it any more: good papers identify causal relationships. Economics deals too much with real people in messy real world situations to ever attain the precision of the natural sciences. But with greater use of natural experiments, creative use of truly exogenous phenomena such as climate or geography, as well as more behavioural and experimental research, economic methods are closer to "science" than they once were. The acceptance of these different types of research methods points to another way in which economics is better than it used to be:
3. Now, economics is (somewhat) more open to a range of ideologies and methodologies
On this blog, Nick Rowe has argued that everyone should be forced to take Econ 1000. I am not sure I agree. People who do not take Econ 1000 are not exposed to Mankiw's ten principles. They do not have the rational choice paradigm and the virtues of trade and markets drilled into them at a young and impressionable age.
Today, some people who call themselves economists have little exposure to the discipline until they start their PhDs. Grad schools, for the most part, spend more time instructing students on econometric and other technique than teaching people "how to think like an economist". Indeed, one could argue that increasingly papers are judged more by their technique and their data than by their adherence to the mainstream paradigm as summarized by Mankiw.
But people whose primary interests are in data and modelling, and who judge a paper by its treatment of endogeneity, are less likely to be bound by a strict neo-classical adherence to rational choice theory. They tend to be more open to a variety of methodological approaches, as long as there is room for some neat econometric analysis or experimentation: neuroeconomics, explorations of identity, norms, culture and values, application of economic methods any place data can be found.
4. Now, economics is engaging
People have always wanted to know what is likely to happen to interest rates, or why people are out of work, but once upon a time it was hard to engage people in microeconomic debates. That's no longer true. Economic research can be satisfying the way that a good detective story is: a mystery is created, and solved. Moreover, people can see themselves in research on the economics of everyday life, and think about how their own behaviour, or that of those around them, responds to incentives, or is shaped by systemic biases.
Not only is the research more engaging, but economists are working harder at engaging people with it - in books like YouNameIt-Onomics, and blogs like this one. More and more media outlets - the New York Times, the Atlantic, Macleans, and so on - feature regular contributions from serious economists. No longer are economists placed in the position of talking for 20 minutes on the phone to a reporter and then cringing at the results. We can communicate directly with the typical reader - who quite often has a better understanding of basic economic principles than the typical journalist.
5. Now, economic research is (in some ways) more democratic.
Thirty years ago, the only way to know what other researchers in one's area were working on was to physically travel to an academic conference. Those who could not afford to travel (or who did not get invited to the right kind of conferences) did not see papers until they appeared in hard copy journals, by which time the literature had often moved on. Even hard copy journals were not easy to access - one actually had to walk to the university library, and if the university did not subscribe to a specialized journal in one's area, the only option was to get it through inter-library loan, or buy it oneself.
Twenty years ago, simply submitting a paper to a journal took a not inconsiderable amount of time and effort - going to the library to look up the mailing address of the journal, printing out three hard copies of one's paper, writing and printing out a submission letter on university letterhead, organizing international postage. Now it takes half an hour, at most, at the computer.
Back then, accessing data internet connection has tens of thousands of datasets just a click away, the development of R means high quality statistical software is, literally, free, and thousands of economics articles are freely available on-line.
All of this has narrowed the gap between elite and non-elite institutions: a 2011 paper by Winkler et al found a noticeable lessening of the difference in publication rates at elite and non-elite institutions between 1991 and 2007, providing evidence that a combination of technological change and other factors, such as increased emphasis on research output at the non-elite institutions, has, in fact, made the profession more democratic than it once was.
Still, every silver lining has a cloud. Each one of these positive trends has a not-so-positive flip side.
1*. Economists test their theories. But only some test results get published.
Papers are more likely to get published if they find startlingly large, new or different results, if they find statistically significant effects, or if they find effects that accord with economic theory. This phenomenon is called publication bias, and has been documented, for example, here here or here. Of course, these studies of publication bias are themselves subject to publication bias, suggesting publication bias may not be as much of a problem as one might think.
Still, the discipline is not characterized by the kind of formulate-hypothesis-then-test-it scientific method taught in introductory econometrics textbooks, and never will be.
2*. Causality isn't everything. Correlations are interesting too.
Maternal employment has been linked to childhood obesity. But does maternal employment cause obesity, or is there some underlying, unobservable characteristic that is associated with both employment and chubby children? I don't know, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest.
Obsessing about causality can blind us to the fascinating, complex, if ultimately unknowable relationships around us.
3*. Economics is not that open to methodological diversity.
Well established economists like George Akerlof and Robert Frank can get away with pushing the boundaries of economics, as can those at more heterodox institutions, such as Nancy Folbre.
The young and untenured are best advised to write papers that stick to the standard conventions.
4*. Public engagement makes the senior administration happy, but no one ever got tenure by blogging.
The hard currency of academic success is still publication in refereed journals.
5*. Old barriers have been replaced by new ones.
As the cost of producing economic research has fallen, and the number of active academic researchers, particularly in Europe and Asia, has risen, the volume of research produced is too much for anyone to cope with.
I have written before on the peer review process (here, here, here and here). I will make just one further observation:
An author's name, institutional affiliations, location, education and professional reputation, provide a signal of his or her ability. Referees would be irrational to ignore that information when assessing an individual's research. Winkler et al's study of the gap between publication rates in elite and non-elite institutions concluded, in the end, that "the story is more of constancy than of change, even in the face of changing technology and rising research expectations."
So the profession is far from perfect. But it is better than it used to be.
Happy Canada Day!
Edward Fullbrook and Paul Davidson (among others) would disagree.
https://rwer.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/doctor-x-pure-shit-and-the-royal-societys-motto/
Posted by: Sandwichman | July 01, 2013 at 07:25 PM
Sandwichman, I think the elaboration of "old theories that nearly everyone knows are false" is exactly what Dr Woolley is celebrating as a shift toward empirics driven by established theory and away from bad theoretical speculation.
Posted by: david | July 01, 2013 at 08:24 PM
david - thanks for that comment.
Sandwichman - what david said. Things change. They're far from perfect - see points 1* through to 5*. But the discipline is different and, in some ways, better, than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
Posted by: Franceswoolley | July 01, 2013 at 11:17 PM
Fair enough, Frances. Are you going to publish the results of the empirical test of your theory?
Posted by: Sandwichman | July 01, 2013 at 11:38 PM
This cult of 'testing' is pseudo-science.
What you have with rival explanatory mechanisms in the essentially complex sciences like you have with Darein's mechanism of natural selection is inference to the best explanation -- you don't get 'tests'.
Let's grow up in this and emerge from the pseudo-scientific dark ages,
Posted by: Greg Ransom | July 02, 2013 at 02:02 AM
Disclaimer: I'm not an economist. I have no skin in this game.
Greg Ransom: so ... what do you propose as an alternative? Seems to me that in the absence of experiments, empirical work is all you have left to keep you honest. It's really not all that different from the way modern physics works. The LHC just smashes stuff together. No two runs are ever the same (the universe just isn't made that way). So, they collect tons of data and analyse it, and look to see if it fits the predictions of their theoretical models. Why can't this work for (especially macro) economics?
As an aside, it seems ecologists have similar problems with correlation/causation, and some nifty ideas on how to handle them:
http://www.uvm.edu/~cdanfort/csc-reading-group/sugihara-causality-science-2012.pdf
Posted by: Patrick | July 02, 2013 at 02:51 AM
Frances, this is an excellent post, and I largely agree except for two demurrals. First, while it is true that the profession has swung dramatically in the direction of empiricism and that this is a cause for cheer, it should be born in mind that a lot of empirical work in economics is essentially calibration. You can see this most clearly in macro, but it is also true in micro. For instance, I’ve done a lot of work on child labor, and quite a few of the papers one finds in the professional literature (less the practitioner literature) take the form of specifying a household utility function and then estimating the parameters the model establishes as causal for household behavior. If you are already quite sure that the theory behind the model is correct this is not a problem, but I would not go so far as to say that this “tests” the theory to any great extent.
Second, while I agree that much more theoretical diversity enters into professional work in bits and pieces, this is usually grafted on to a core model that is right out of the principles course (with more math). Thus: let us assume a perfectly competitive economy populated by rational, self-interested consumers and profit-maximizing firms, blah blah blah, but with the exception that people/firms are also motivated by x. And, yes, x can be all sorts of interesting things. Nevertheless, it is the very untouchable-ness of the core model that permits the experimentation with wrinkles and allows the final product to get published. The profession is long overdue for a new core that is conscious of the diversity of work economists have done in recent decades and allows space for these innovations to expand as the evidence warrants.
Posted by: Peter Dorman | July 02, 2013 at 03:27 AM
Peter Dorman,
"Second, while I agree that much more theoretical diversity enters into professional work in bits and pieces, this is usually grafted on to a core model that is right out of the principles course (with more math). Thus: let us assume a perfectly competitive economy populated by rational, self-interested consumers and profit-maximizing firms, blah blah blah, but with the exception that people/firms are also motivated by x."
That sounds like Karl Marx's methodology: begin with a very broad abstraction, then move in stages of de-abstraction to a picture that is closer to reality. Marx argued that, when appearances are deceiving (as in the case of society, where you can't describe it based purely on people's stated intentions) such a method is vital, because straightforward observation will lead you to a "vulgar" picture that is fundamentally wrong and vague.
Is it that the core is untouchable or that it's hard to change? For example, John Muth certainly changed the core of economics, but the rational expectations revolution was not plain sailing for its advocates. Ratex folk had to do a lot of engaging with the mainstream before they became mainstream and most economists who want to change the "core" of economics don't want to do that.
Posted by: W. Peden | July 02, 2013 at 07:05 AM
Greg Ransom: I don't know if you read down to 1* where I said "Still, the discipline is not characterized by the kind of formulate-hypothesis-then-test-it scientific method taught in introductory econometrics textbooks, and never will be."
The point I'm making here is that there's been big shift in the way that economics is done towards more empirical work - one can believe that's a good thing without subscribing to a strict positivist view of economic methodology.
Peter Dorman - those are good points. I think, though, the methodological core of rational utility maximization is not quite so tightly held these days - it's to some extent been replaced by a new methodological core of establishing causal relationships.
Posted by: Franceswoolley | July 02, 2013 at 07:28 AM
What you have with rival explanatory mechanisms in the essentially complex sciences like you have with Darein's mechanism of natural selection is inference to the best explanation -- you don't get 'tests'.
Let's grow up in this and emerge from the pseudo-scientific dark ages.
I'll not speak to economics (at which I am a duffer) but with regards to physics and chemistry, that's false too. It assumes a fundamentally Newtonian view of physics as isolated/discrete cause and effect where everything is analytic. That model describes macro (human-scale) physics very very well and mechanical & civil engineering is built on it. But it's not everything.
Newton ruled the roost for two centuries, reaching his peak with Maxwell's Laws of electromagnetism. But starting in the 1890's and culminating in the 1930's that view got turned on its head with the advent of Modern Physics based on Relativity (at the cosmic scale) and Quantum Mechanics (at the atomic level). Those two theories don't get along very well and since we still can't completely merge them we don't have a Grand Unified Theory (yet).
More specifically, much early testing of General Relativity began by tying to explain deviations from classical mechanics in special cases. The orbit of Mercury is one such case (a complex one, from a classical POV). Mercury is close enough to the Sun and thus gravity is strong enough that it experiences relativistic effects in its orbit. General Relativity explains Mercury's orbit perfectly and throws out a perfectly classical solution for further planets like Earth.
Sure, you can say that we don't "know" that there isn't a thruster on Mercury making it orbit oddly, but when General Relativity explains every planet's orbit, it's persuasive.
Posted by: Determinant | July 02, 2013 at 12:32 PM
Is 'inference to the best explanation' the new term for purely deductive 'praxeology'?
Posted by: david | July 02, 2013 at 12:47 PM
Determinant,
So while it would be incorrect to say that Newtonian physics has been "falsified" (in the sense that we have an observation that is inconsistent with Newtonian theory) we CAN say that General Relativity better explains what we observe and it is inconsistent with Newtonian physics?
Posted by: W. Peden | July 02, 2013 at 01:12 PM
GR derives Newtonian physics as a limiting approximation (at low speeds).
Posted by: david | July 02, 2013 at 01:20 PM
W. Peden,
I think we can say that Newtonian physics has been falsified (although for many practical purposes it still serves). Even on Determinant's example, Newtonian physics wouldn't expain the motion of mercury, rather Newtonian physics and a mysterious thruster would explain the motion of Mercury.
Posted by: Bob Smith | July 02, 2013 at 02:35 PM
Many theories are not readily recognized, nor appreciated.
I once read a wonderful paper by Bruce Kaufman. I wrote him to show appreciation. He told me that in the 2 years since publishing his paper, I was the only person to contact him and recognize his paper. It is good to inspire others in their work.
Posted by: Edward Lambert | July 02, 2013 at 02:56 PM
david is correct. In 1900 all we had was Newtonian physics and an ever-increasing number of inconsistent observations in extreme but plausible cases. Newtownian physics wasn't declared false but it was concluded to be incomplete. It is a useful and workable approximation at low fractions of the speed of light, which is everything we see and interact with here on Earth. Newtownian physics is but a particular case of GR, though a common one in everyday life.
As david said General Relativity generates Newtownian physics at low fractions of c but goes on to consistently explain non-classical phenomenon at high fractions of c or high values of gravity (in Mercury's case).
General Relativity itself (a four-dimensional model) was soon extended into five dimensions in 1921 as Kazula-Klein Theory, which was the first of many higher-dimension theory (KKT is particularly elegant and unifies GR and Maxwell's Equations with simple mathematical expressions).
Further, "inference to the best explanation" is exactly what GR does. Newtownian physics is linear so it has algebraic solutions which are exact and costless to use. GR is non-linear (it isn't commutative, order matters) has very complex solutions. Frequently we have to use numeric approximations instead of exact solutions so solving it is costly. There is no general exact solution of general relativity, only particular ones.
Posted by: Determinant | July 02, 2013 at 04:05 PM
Frances, I think your comments would also apply to other fields as well, such as medicine. The rise of more rigorous empiricism is a good thing, but what has to come next time is more experience with its flaws and a larger audience of readers who know to be skeptical of apparent rigor (lots of math masquerading as truth). I think economists also deserve credit for their willingness to publish their data, something not all fields are willing to do.
Many of the prior weaknesses you list can't be squarely blamed on economists though--in your observations, there are many problems that have more to do with general flaws in academia, the sophistication or non-sophistication of the policy audience, and the amorphous business of what is generally acceptable within certain professions. I think economics is in better shape than other disciplines in those respects.
Posted by: Shangwen | July 02, 2013 at 05:02 PM
Shangwen - "what has to come next time is more experience with its flaws and a larger audience of readers who know to be skeptical"
Unfortunately the media suffers from publication bias in a major way. xkcd summarized that brilliantly with the green jelly beans cause acne comic. I don't if there's anything that will make "dog bites man" as interesting a story as "man bites dog" - so the man bites dog academic papers are the ones that get the coverage.
Posted by: Frances Woolley | July 02, 2013 at 06:26 PM
Bob Smith,
Newtonian physics may not explain the position of Mercury, but it is inconsistent with the motion of Mercury? There could be unknown causes of the motion of Mercury such that (i) Mercury's motion is as we observe it to be and (ii) Newtonian physics is true.
Similarly, if an apple drops from a tree, then it is consistent with Newtonian physics that it doesn't fall down to the ground, because there could be something stopping it from doing so.
Determinant,
Similarly, when you say these observations are inconsistent with Newtonian physics, do you mean "inconsistent with Newtonian physics AND some additional assumptions e.g. that our equipment we use to study quantum phenomena is working properly"?
It seems that the counterexamples to Newtonian physics disconfirm it (in the sense of making it less likely that Newtonian physics is an accurate description of the physical behaviour of everything in the universe and in combination make it very VERY VERY VERY unlikely that Newtonian physics is an accurate description of the universe) but don't actually falsify Newtonian physics, in the way that "This is a white raven" falsifies "All ravens are black".
Posted by: W. Peden | July 02, 2013 at 07:03 PM
Similarly, when you say these observations are inconsistent with Newtonian physics, do you mean "inconsistent with Newtonian physics AND some additional assumptions e.g. that our equipment we use to study quantum phenomena is working properly"?
I mean inconsistent with pure Newtonian orbital mechanics, such that for any given position, the orbital path predicted by pure Newtownian physics is wrong. These observations were confirmed through multiple independent labs, telescopes and teams so the only thing left to be wrong that was common amongst them was the theory.
That and we have observed mercury to be a barren, sun-baked ball of rock with a consistent mass for hundreds of years. Unless there is a cloaked ship there with a tractor beam that has been there for centuries, General Relativity wins.
There could be unknown causes of the motion of Mercury such that (i) Mercury's motion is as we observe it to be and (ii) Newtonian physics is true. That was the case in 1895. General Relativity does not replace Newtonian physics entirely; Newtonian physics was demonstrated to be special case of General Relativity applicable to velocities less that 10% of c (the speed of light in a vacuum) and at distances from supermassive objects like the Sun on the order of the orbit of Venus.
The orbit of Mercury as calculated by General Relativity is completely correct, which was early confirmation for GR and Einstein.
Posted by: Determinant | July 02, 2013 at 07:27 PM
"I mean inconsistent with pure Newtonian orbital mechanics, such that for any given position, the orbital path predicted by pure Newtownian physics is wrong. These observations were confirmed through multiple independent labs, telescopes and teams so the only thing left to be wrong that was common amongst them was the theory."
These observations don't totally rule out a disrupting influence on the orbit of Mercury though, do they? It's utterly improbable that there is some unknown cause of Mercury's orbit that causes it to behave in a way we don't expect (given what we think are the influences on the orbit of Mercury) and it's something that only a madman or a philosophy student would suggest, but it's possible.
"That and we have observed mercury to be a barren, sun-baked ball of rock with a consistent mass for hundreds of years. Unless there is a cloaked ship there with a tractor beam that has been there for centuries, General Relativity wins."
I agree, as well as your point about GR deriving Newtonian physics as a special case (so all the evidence in favour of NP is evidence in favour of GR and GR explains a lot of things that we can't explain, given what else we think about the universe, using NP) but your example is just the kind of logically possible yet blatantly unlikely thing I'm thinking about.
The reason I ask is that Newtonian physics is one of the counterexamples against the falsificationist philosophy of science: falsificationists like Karl Popper don't want to deny that Newtonian physics is a scientific theory (an uphill battle if there ever was one!) but there are no observation sentences that are logically inconsistent with Newtonian physics. It's an even worse problem for falsificationism than Darwinism, because at least some people (and more people when Popper was writing) are willing to imagine that Darwinism is pseudo-scientific.
To explain why we first made the move to Newtonian physics and then to GR with Newtonian physics as special case, we have to look at the interesting confirmations and disconfirmations of these theories, i.e. observations that made them either more or less likely. So we find that GR successfully makes a lot of interesting predictions (like the orbit of Mercury) and we inductively infer that GR is a predictively good theory, and if a theory is consistently a predictively good theory then it's probably because it's (at least partly) a true theory. Since falsificationists don't allow for induction in science, this whole episode is a big problem for them.
For those of us who aren't falsificationists, it's quite ok that (a) Newtonian physics and Darwinism are unfalsifiable and (b) they are both scientific. Since I don't know much about physics, I wanted to make sure that I'm not wrong in thinking (a).
Posted by: W. Peden | July 03, 2013 at 07:18 AM
W Peden: "There could be unknown causes of the motion of Mercury such that (i) Mercury's motion is as we observe it to be and (ii) Newtonian physics is true."
Sure, but then Newtonian physics isn't a complete theory of the motion of the planets (amongst other things) it has to be combined with a theory of an unknown driver. Which is fine, if you want to propose a Newtonian/rocket-thruster (or whatever) theory of planetary motion. That's a scientific theory, but one that's falsifiable (and, based on planetary surveys thus far, not supported).
"it's quite ok that (a) Newtonian physics and Darwinism are unfalsifiable and (b) they are both scientific"
Those statements are inconsistent. Any theory that isn't falsifiable (or, at least, doesn't make falsifiable predictions) isn't scientific, it's faith.
Posted by: Bob Smith | July 03, 2013 at 08:32 AM
Bob Smith,
"Newtonian physics isn't a complete theory of the motion of the planets (amongst other things)"
Exactly, so the observed motion of the planets cannot falsify Newtonian physics. There is nothing in the observable universe that would falsify Newtonian physics.
"Any theory that isn't falsifiable (or, at least, doesn't make falsifiable predictions) isn't scientific, it's faith."
Firstly, I don't deny that we can use Newtonian physics as part of making falsifiable predictions.
Secondly, I have no idea what would falsify Newtonian physics or (especially) Darwinism. If we define Darwinism as the claim that some beings evolve due to Darwinian natural selection and this results in a variety of species, then it's clearly unfalsifiable: we can't explore all times and all places, so we couldn't possibly have an observation that would prove Darwinism to be false. The only question is how far can Darwinism explain observed evolution and speciation, e.g. it works well for Galapagos turtles, but obviously not for pigs or cows or sheep or modern human evolution. Since Darwinism works well for most cases of evolution, it's reasonable to infer (again by induction) that a future species we encounter on Earth will have undergone Darwinian evolution as well.
Posted by: W. Peden | July 03, 2013 at 08:48 AM
I've been mostly ignoring this physics thread because I haven't found it very interesting, but it seems like some people are enjoying it, and that's good.
There's a world of difference between saying "it's nice to look at some data every so often" and subscribing to a strict positivist, theory - prediction - test - revision of theory, epistemological stance.
The point I'm making here is that it's not a bad idea to see if one's theory is somewhat consistent with real world data. As I've said already, "Still, the discipline is not characterized by the kind of formulate-hypothesis-then-test-it scientific method taught in introductory econometrics textbooks, and never will be."
Posted by: Franceswoolley | July 03, 2013 at 08:53 AM
Frances Woolley,
Would you say that predictive accuracy for an economic model is only important within the particular area you want to study using the model? For example, if you had a microeconomic model that did a good job of predicting time-series data in oil futures markets, how much would you be bothered if it did a poor job at predicting some cross-sectional data?
Posted by: W. Peden | July 03, 2013 at 08:58 AM
W. Peden,
If you're going to quote me, quote the whole sentence.
"There is nothing in the observable universe that would falsify Newtonian physics"
Except that its made predictions that are observably inaccurate. Put it differently, there is nothing in the observable universe which explains those inaccurate predictions in a manner consistent with Newtonian physics.
"The only question is how far can Darwinism explain observed evolution and speciation, e.g. it works well for Galapagos turtles, but obviously not for pigs or cows or sheep or modern human evolution."
Why doesn't darwinism work for humans? I might concede the point with respect to modern farm animals (which are arguably engineered), although even there too Darwinian pressures can exert themselves - a mutation that makes animals more delectible to human consumption is likely to give its owner (or, at least, its owners genes) a competitive edge. That farm animals are raised by humans is just a different environmental pressure shaping their evolution.
Posted by: Bob Smith | July 03, 2013 at 11:20 AM
Bob Smith,
"there is nothing in the observable universe which explains those inaccurate predictions in a manner consistent with Newtonian physics."
Yes, but logically there could be, so our observations are not logically inconsistent with Newtonian physics. What they do is make it very unlikely that Newtonian physics is true of all physical phenomena.
Logically inconsistency is a very strong relation: all the evidence we have of human beings isn't logically inconsistent with the proposition "On average, human beings have three eyeballs".
"Why doesn't darwinism work for humans?"
It works for most of our evolution, but not our modern evolution, because (a) Darwinian evolution by natural selection requires that a species breed up to the limit of the food supply, but many human populations produce a lot more food than they need to survive and some even having static/falling numbers despite food surpluses e.g. Germany; (b) Darwinian evolution by natural selection has only a few survivors in each generation, but human pre-reproductive age mortality rates are low and falling; (c) human life now is a thousand miles away from a vicious competition to survive and breed.
That's not to deny that we are facing selection pressures and evolving. It's just that we need to modify the theory of evolution from Darwin's day in order to understand the way that humans are currently evolving.
As for farm animals, they face selection pressures, but (i) not natural selection pressures (i.e. selection by design) and (ii) the selection pressures they face are not Darwinian pressures i.e. competition for food, in surviving predators, and for the chance to breed. Again, they're evolving, but not in a Darwinian way. That's consistent with Darwinism, because Darwinism is only intended as an explanation of most evolution. The great value of Darwinism is that it is by far our best explanation of speciation.
Posted by: W. Peden | July 03, 2013 at 02:46 PM
"The young and untenured..."
What about young, untenured who are already prominent in public discourse (Noah Smith) and even not-yet-graduated ( Carola Binder or Owen Zidar). Are they being born in a world with new rules?
Posted by: Jacques René Giguère | July 03, 2013 at 05:12 PM
Jacques Rene - no, I don't think the rules have changed. Noah Smith is in a business school, and that might make some difference. But I sure hope he's getting more out than I can see from a quick look at his web page and searching "Noah Smith" Stony Brook on google scholar. Blogging is the crack cocaine of academic research - giving it up for the no-thrills game of traditional academic publication has to be hard.
If an untenured person wants to (say) hike mountains in their spare time, a tenure committee may be somewhat understanding. But if an untenured person wants to blog in his or her spare time, the tenure committee will think: since you're writing anyways, why aren't you writing serious academic research?
Posted by: Frances Woolley | July 03, 2013 at 07:00 PM
Prof. Woolley, I'm not sure I follow you when you talk about rational choice theory and other frameworks. My understanding is that research on "neuroeconomics, explorations of identity, norms, culture and values" is based on the usual canon: rational preferences (is this the same as rational choice theory?) and VNM-Savage Expected Utility (but with tweaks).
Yes, the field is more open in its choice of research questions, but I believe the same framework dominates. Austrians, neo-Keynesians, Heterodox economists, etc. are still marginalized.
Posted by: Jack P. | July 04, 2013 at 09:32 AM
Jack P - that's true, but the reduced cost of publication and communication has made it easier for heterodox economists to find each other, publish their own journals, etc. The Real World Economics Review has been quoted a couple of times here in the comments - that couldn't have existed 20 years ago, because the cost of publication and distribution would have been prohibitive.
Posted by: FR Woolley | July 04, 2013 at 09:54 AM
Jack P.: take Austrians. The Austrian School started in 1871, and many of its ideas became very much part of the mainstream very quickly. The Austrians were very successful revolutionaries, and that revolution was called the "Neoclassical revolution". They were certainly not marginalised (oops! that pun was not intentional, but this one is: we are all marginalists now, in large part because of the Austrians). What we now call "Austrian economics" is what sets it apart from the mainstream. So "Austrian economics" is marginalised *by definition*.
Posted by: Nick Rowe | July 04, 2013 at 09:55 AM
Blogging may be crack or it may be fine wine in the World of Tomorrow.( I am talking about bloggers of the highest order.)
How will a tenure commitee evaluate a young'un who influence academic and public debate? Is Mark Thoma really disserve Carola binder future employment by linking frequently to her? Will the tenure commitee decision be motivated by envy or by old fogeys not understanding the World of Tomorrow ( not that this would ever happen of course)...
Posted by: Jacques René Giguère | July 04, 2013 at 04:57 PM
W. peden,
When you say there is "nothing" that would falsify Darwinian evolution I wonder what on earth you are talking about. Off the top of my head, there are two things:
- An irreducibly complex organ/body part.
- A fossil in the wrong place.
Newton's physics is also completely falsifiable, and at very big and very small levels, it has been falsified. If you want to be strict, it is false at all levels, though of course it's so accurate at every day levels that it doesn't matter too much.
Posted by: UnlearningEcon | July 05, 2013 at 04:25 AM
UnlearningEcon,
The existence of an irreducibly complex organ wouldn't falsify Darwinism, e.g. if an alien came here circa 5000 B.C. and engineered such a thing, it wouldn't falsify Darwinism. As I've argued, Darwinism isn't meant as an explanation of all evolution, so it follows that it can't be meant as an explanation of all life, and so the discovery of life that didn't develop along Darwinian lines does not falsify Darwinism.
There could be lots of reasons why a fossil is in the wrong place, none of which logically imply that Darwinism isn't an accurate explanation of almost all evolution. If you want to argue that Darwinism is an explanation of ALL evolution, then it's obviously false (as we can see non-Darwinian evolution all around us- how many children die every year in your local area?) and since Darwinism isn't obviously false (it's true) then I'm not going to accept such a definition.
Even though Newton's physics is false, it's still not falsifiable, if one defines 'falsifiable' as it has traditionally been defined (e.g. by Karl Popper) as "logically inconsistent with at least one observation statement". We have plenty of observations that make it very, very, very unlikely that Newtonian physics is true, but being "very, very, very unlikely to be true given what we've observed" is not the same thing as being logically inconsistent with what we've observed.
This is one of the hints that falsifiability is a rubbish demarcation criterion between science and pseudo-science: our two paradigmatic examples of scientific theories aren't falsifiable!
Posted by: W. Peden | July 05, 2013 at 05:24 AM
The fact that anomalies might be explainable doesn't mean the theory is unfalsifiable. The theory would be falsified if there were no evidence for an explanation, as there is no evidence that "an alien came here circa 5000 B.C."
And Newtonian physics is logically inconsistent with the fact that velocity is relative. See eg this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM630Z8lho8
(I don't agree with that video, it's exaggerating, but it demonstrates the example well)
Posted by: UnlearningEcon | July 05, 2013 at 06:57 AM
UnlearningEcon,
"The fact that anomalies might be explainable doesn't mean the theory is unfalsifiable."
It means exactly that. Falsification is a logical relationship (inconsistency, which takes the form of either contradiction or subcontrariness) between (a) a proposition that is falsified and (b) an observation statement that falsifies it. The observation statement "X is an irreducible organ" neither contradicts nor is subcontrary to "Most evolution takes the form of natural selection along Darwinian lines and most diversity among life is the result of evolution".
Logical inconsistency is a very strong logical relationship. For example, the evidence we have up until now is consistent with the truth of the long-run Phillips Curve, because the long-run Phillips Curve is an open-ended statistical generalisation and we might (i.e. it's not a contradiction to suppose) be living through a few millenia which are exceptions at the beginning of a period where the long-run Phillips Curve holds. For the same, "Most human children are hermaphrodites" has not been falsified by our natural history, and in fact this proposition is also unfalsifiable. So is "There is a planet whose surface is mostly made up of water" and a whole host of apparentely scientific propositions. As I say, it's a rubbish demarcation criterion.
An unexplainable irreducible organ makes Darwinism VERY slightly less likely, since the cause of the organ could be the cause of other biological features. However, if we developed an irreducibly complex organ in a laboratory, that obviously wouldn't falsify Darwinism.
Here's the most hackneyed philosophy of science example of a falsifiable proposition: (1) "All ravens are black". Obviously, the proposition (2) "X is a raven and X is not black" falsifies (1), because (1) and (2) cannot both be true.
"And Newtonian physics is logically inconsistent with the fact that velocity is relative."
Perhaps, but we don't observe that velocity is relative, we observe evidence in favour the relativity of velocity. Put another way, "Velocity is relative" is not an observation statement.
Posted by: W. Peden | July 05, 2013 at 07:54 AM
"2*. Causality isn't everything. Correlations are interesting too.
Maternal employment has been linked to childhood obesity. But does maternal employment cause obesity, or is there some underlying, unobservable characteristic that is associated with both employment and chubby children? I don't know, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest."
Or do obese children cause their mothers to get jobs? :-) Hey, I can spin a plausible story about that, you know!
Posted by: Nathanael | July 20, 2013 at 11:58 PM
"Noah Smith is in a business school, and that might make some difference. "
In a business/finance school, the real way you get ahead is not to publish papers, but to get filthy rich. This is not exactly a secret, given who business/finance school is marketed to.
So if Noah Smith manages to amass a private fortune, he can blog all he likes and get tenure. If he doesn't, he can publish all he likes and.... well, he might get tenure, or he might not.
I suppose I should get a business school job since I already have the private fortune.
Posted by: Nathanael | July 21, 2013 at 12:18 AM