I’m slamming macro below. Even then, I think we know a fair amount, as is implied by my hedging. Economists are useless when it comes to many fundamental questions important to policy, not all. I think micro counts as a science, especially empirically-focused experimental micro. My rhetoric is overbroad, so my apologies to empirically-oriented micro people.
In another excellent Economix post that I missed (thanks Gherald L), Princeton’s Uwe Reinhardt makes a version of my point, showing how easy it is for macroeconomists to cherrypick estimates of, say, the responsiveness of workers to changes in marginal tax rates to support what they’ve already concluded. The moral of Reinhardt’s story deserves emphasis:
So there you have the flexibility, shall we say, that economists enjoy when they apply their professional skills to affairs of state in what may seem, to outsiders, like purely scientific analyses.
In the first lecture of my freshman economics course at Princeton titled “The Art of Siffing Among Seasoned Adults,” I demonstrate how seasoned adults routinely structure information felicitously(i.e., “sif”) to further their own agenda, and I point out that economists can be among the most skillful practitioners of this art.
“If at the end of this course you still trust me,” I warn them, “I have failed in my mission. When economists advise on public policy, the operative mantra is Caveat Emptor!”
I am sad to teach it, but consider it fair and full disclosure.
Thanks for the clarification but you could kinda figure. Whenever someone is complaining about economic policy and somewhere something to the effect of “pretending it is “economics” as you did, it usually means the person is bashing macro and the over-reliance upon it in understanding economic phenomena.
I largely agree with the original tirade. Here's an amusing quote from Stanely Fischer that sympathizers may find amusing:
Q: Why do you think there is more consensus amongst economists over microeconomic issues compared to macroeconomic issues?
A: In part because micro is less important and in part because, believe it or not, I think that the empirical standards are lower in microeconomics. Let me justify what I mean. When Rudi Dornbusch and I came to write our principles book I knew macro well but hadn't done much micro for a long time. I thought it was going to be a breeze, the macro part we know and the micro part is all clear – there would be a thousand empirical equations out there to illustrate demand and supply curves. Well the empirical backing isn't around very much – there are lots of stories and models but I don't think micro focuses on a set of issues in the same way that macro does. Microeconomists are not called upon to explain real-world phenomena to anything like the extent that macroeconomists are. They don't have a daily confrontation with policy makers, the newspapers and the capital markets. One of the very successful micro fields is finance, partly because they are really pushed to come up with something that will stand the test of a lot of very sceptical people.
From A Modern Guide to Macroeconomics, first edition.
I think micro counts as a science, especially empirically-focused experimental micro.
One characteristic of science that economics seems to lack are semi-porous and productive boundaries with other sciences. At a certain point in the study of physics one starts doing what could be called chemistry. Similarly, at a certain (vague) point chemistry hands the ball off to biology and biology eventually gives way to ecology, etc. At these boundaries, each science informs the other and the dividing line is often arbitrary or undefined, Mainstream/neoclassical economics, however, seems to exist in a scientific vacuum, with almost no interaction with, for instance, the geophysical sciences or ecology despite the vastness, importance, and complexity of the interactions between economic, ecological and geophysical phenomena. Behavioral economists seem to be making progress at the micro-economics level vis a vis psychology, as you allude to above, but until economics rigorously and methodically connects itself to other empirical fields of knowledge it seems unsurprising to me that a great deal of it will just be so much wanking.
It also occurs to me that shifts in economic thinking bear more resemblance to changing trends in fashion than to any sort of Kuhnian paridigm shifting (cf Cambridge capital controversies–interesting stuff, but nothing remotely resembling science going on there). I presume this is due to the relative lack of empirical results that inevitably lead to the theoretically intolerable anomalies that motivate scientific revolutions. I suspect that, at least as far as intellectual discourse and culture goes, most academic economists would be more comfortable in comparative literature departments than in chemistry or physics departments.
Actually, micro is as much of a not-a-science as macro. Steve Keen has a pretty good book (not sure how easy it is to get) called Debunking Economics: the Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences. If you really want to know the lack of substance and ridiculousness of the assumptions behind our wonderful “science”, it's a great place to start.
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“Behavioral economists seem to be making progress at the micro-economics level vis a vis psychology, as you allude to above, but until economics rigorously and methodically connects itself to other empirical fields of knowledge it seems unsurprising to me that a great deal of it will just be so much wanking.”
Amen to that.