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42 sats \ 7 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 31 Jul \ parent \ on: 400 Ph.D. Economists vs. One Shiny Rock econ
Glad to hear that those tools are useful to someone! Why didn’t these empirical economists just go into physics or another empirical science? Engineering is also a useful outlet for their skills.
As jaded as I am about academic economics, I can't deny that the tools are really useful. It's not an accident that most of the big tech companies have departments full of phd economists. I'd say about 50% of Econ phds I knew actually went that route
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It is good for the economists that they are desired by somebody for their expertise! The 50/50 private vs public employees is somewhat bothersome, of course. That means that fully half of them cannot get employment in the private economy! It is also good that they use more than one per department so the advice can be measured one against the other.
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And it's not just tools it's also a way of thinking. Best way I can describe it is to take an engineers mindset and apply it to a problem with human actors.
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Or, another picture would be an economist developer applying his tools to the problems in the full economy and world trade.
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People have different interests and economic intuition isn't the same as spatial reasoning.
Doing empirical causal inference still requires thinking about human action and incentives, but it's in service of understanding why various measures may be biased and how those biases can be addressed.
Many of us do have backgrounds in the physical sciences, but find these puzzles more interesting to think about.
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I think it's exactly this careful thinking about incentives and especially how that plays into measurement that no other technical field seems to think much about. That's what makes economists so valuable inside company strategy and data teams.
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People have different interests and economic intuition isn't the same as spatial reasoning.
This I can understand! People have differing skills and interests. For example; have you ever seen an engineer trying to sell something to someone else? It is an interesting experience! Or better yet, have some new sales person talk to someone who has done a lot of sales? Practice and interest have a lot to do with success in some of these fields.
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