Noah Smith — Russ Roberts and the new empirical world

My last post, about Russ Roberts' EconTalk interview with David Autor, was requested by Russ as part of a general symposium on the topic. But it also reminded me that I had wanted to blog about two earlier EconTalk episodes - Russ' interviews with Joshua Angriest and Adam Ozimek.

These interviews, along with my own and Autor's, are basically part of a series. In this series, a bunch of people basically try to convince Russ that empirical economics matters a lot. Russ plays the part of the econ public - the average older academic, plus the econ-literate community of policy wonks, blog readers, and the like. He starts off basically thinking that econ is about theory (as it really was back when he was learning his chops). Then, through a successive series of conversations, he becomes convinced that not only have things changed, but that this is as it should be.…

But don't get your hopes up about macro.

the fact that the new methods don't really work in macroeconomics. 

Noahpinion
Russ Roberts and the new empirical world
Noah Smith | Assistant Professor of Finance, Stony Brook University