What we need is to teach empirics. We need to teach undergrads how to tell if theories are right or wrong.Ya think?
Noahpinion
Econ 101 should have more empirics
Noah Smith | Assistant Professor of Finance, Stony Brook University
Greg Mankiw doesn't think so.
We teachers of introductory economics can and should explain where and why economists disagree. That is part of helping students develop their critical thinking skills. But I doubt students are in a position to try to evaluate the competing empirical work that shapes the differing views.Greg Mankiw's Blog
In the end, introductory economics is just that: an introduction to the economist's way of thinking. That means giving students basic concepts--comparative advantage, supply and demand, market efficiency and market failure--that will make them more perceptive readers of the newspaper.
Improving Econ 101
Gregory Mankiw | Professor of Economics at Harvard Universit
Seems that "explain[ing] where and why economists disagree" would logically include empirical evidence?
Noah Smith hits the nail on the head.
Teaching Econ 101 students theory after theory after theory leaves them with the impression that they could have just been fed a line of bull. And in fact, they’re right -- they could have. Instead, teach them to be skeptical, look at the evidence, and think for themselves.
2 comments:
I think that Mankiw also hits the nail on the head. IIUC, he says that in economics reason is more important than empiricism. That squares with my impression that economics is largely pre-scientific.
R.H. Coase "How should economists choose?" Warren Nutter Lecture, 1981. Reprinted in Essays on Economics and Economists (1994/2012)
"But a theory is not like an airline or bus timetable. We are not interested simply in the accuracy of its predictions. A theory also serves as a base for thinking. It helps us to understand what is going on by enabling us to organize our thoughts. Faced with a choice between a theory which predicts well but gives us little insight into how the system works and one which gives us this insight but predicts badly, I would choose the latter, and I am inclined to think that most economists would do the same."
p. 16-17 [emphasis added]
"If you torture the data enough, nature will always confess."
p. 27.
Coase states that he said this in a talk at the University of Virginia in the early 1960s and that this saying, "in a somewhat altered form, has taken its place in the statistical literature."
Alternative: "If you torture the data long enough, it will confess."
Cited in: Gordon Tullock, "A Comment on Daniel Klein's 'A Plea to Economists Who Favor Liberty'", Eastern Economic Journal, Spring 2001.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase
My question is if "a theory which predicts well but gives us little insight into how the system works and one which gives us this insight but predicts badly," how is one so sure that it explains how the system works. Scientific explanation is supposedly causal, i.e., necessary. The necessity comes from the deductive aspect of the theory. The warrant that the deduction is correct is falsifiability. If a theory "does not predict well" it is falsified. This appears to me to be one of the stupidest things written since the triumph of scientific methodology over theology and metaphysics. It's a step back toward medieval times.
(Philosopher of science rolls his eyes and scratches his head while he writes this.)
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