Cartoon: Economists socially
Via the always excellent SMBC.
I would say this is a close approximation to how I operate in town – I just usually forget the notepad 😉
On a more serious note, it is true that people who do economics do tend to be very analytical about social situations – that is the field we work in, that is what we do, and we are a self-selected group that does that. It reminds me of that facetious paper that did an anthropological analysis of economists – does anyone know where that is so I can link it here? Update: Here, thanks Eric Crampton.
Life amongst the Econ, by Axel Leijonhufvud. Any Google search brings it up.
@Eric Crampton
Thanks – I couldn’t remember the title, and searching for anthropology and economics didn’t get me anywhere!
I’ve never read it before and it was thoroughly depressing!
@rauparaha
“Thus, in explaining to a stranger, for example, why he holds Sociogs or the Polsci in such low regard, the Econ will say that “they do not make modls” and leave it at that”.
Pure awesome.
@Matt Nolan
One prominent NZ econ blogger might be more likely to use the phrase “they do not make reductionist modls” and leave it at that. Which I find FAR more convincing 😉
@rauparaha
Without reductionism you’re not really making “modls” right 😉
@Matt Nolan
Can’t you have a model with emergent phenomena given as a parameter input? It would then be hard to term it reductionist unless the term were used very loosely.
@rauparaha
But you would want to come up with a reason why you pick that parameter – and that causal reasoning will be based on another reductionist model right?
@Matt Nolan
Only if you mean emergence in a very weak sense. Otherwise there would be observational evidence without an explanatory, reductionist model. Perhaps it’s a poor example but is there a reductionist model for humans’ time preference? If so, I haven’t seen it often cited by economists when they choose a discount rate for their modl.
@rauparaha
Ahhh, Mill style deductivism aye. I would note that these “internally found” parameters are just given facts – you can’t reduce down past them. Where possible, it would be nice to use psychological models to build these – and that is one area of research no?