Why Are Economists
Indeed So Unscientific?
SUSANNA SÄLLSTRÖM MATTHEWS
www.bepress.com July 2008
Barbara Bergmann hopes for a renaissance of a more scientific approach to
economics.
The scientific method consists of observing real world phenomena and finding
the simplest model that can explain these observations.
Since few economists are trained to do this, the theories they construct often
do not satisfy Poppers criterion of falsification. David Heigham thus wonders
whether there exists a testable theory for why this might be so? The father of
economic analysis, Alfred Marshall, noted that humans consume not
only external goods but also internal goods, such as the satisfaction obtained
from an elegant mathematical model. Thus a model which cannot be tested could
still have value as an internal good. The taste for such an internal good is
acquired. According to the Nobel Laureate Gary Becker such acquisition depends
on the individuals private and social capital. In economics these would
correspond to the individuals private skills and the number of other
economists who possess
the skills to appreciate their models.
When young economists enter the profession they must decide which club to
join.
If they acquire technical skills which enable them to join the club which
produces
theory for its own sake, their prospects will be greater the larger the number
of economists
who have already joined this particular club. Those who join this club are,
furthermore,
those who can acquire these skills the most readily. Thus as economic analysis
has become more technical, mathematicians have progressively realised that they
have a future in economics. As this club has attracted more and more
individuals who value technical elegance for its own sake, it
has moved ever further away from addressing novel economic problems.
Consequently, the problem described by Bergmann has arisen. Young economists
who enter the profession will be told that adoptinga more scientific approach
would ruin their careers, since most economists are neither
trained nor motivated to evaluate such contributions.
Their chances to succeed if they acquired such human capital would therefore be
small, whereas their chances would be enhanced if they joined the biggest
club, which in economics is currently theory for its own sake.
This theory has testable implications for which papers will be selected for
publication by leading journals. It predicts that the proportion of papers
containing novel economic ideas should have decreased at the expense of more
technical contributions, and in fact that it will continue to decrease. If,
instead, the proportions have remained constant, or do not continue to
decrease, then the hypothesis could be rejected.
Susanna Sällström Matthews
University of Cambridge
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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