Is economics a science? Yawn!
Matt has written a long post discussing Rosenberg and Curtain’s NYT article about the science of economics. Their basic point is that economics has a poor forecasting record so it’s not a science and we should just treat it as a useful art. Matt’s response engages directly with the philosophy of science but I think an interesting perspective is raised by Paul Krugman in his reply. He first points out that economists’ models have actually performed very well throughout the crisis and Bernanke is far from an artist:
…far from acting as a free-spirited improviser, Bernanke has been largely implementing recipes developed in the academic literature years before.
These are easy points to score against the philosophers, who appear completely clueless about economics. Worse, they spend all their time attacking the strawman of logical positivism, which has never really described the way economists or other scientists actually work. But I’m going to leave that argument to Matt because I think, in one key respect, Paul Krugman goes too far. Read more