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I'd say that the techniques have gotten better, but that undeserved confidence has outpaced it.
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Yes, but it's more than that. I think this demand for heightened empirical rigor has led directly to us giving up on trying to answer big/important/interesting questions because there would necessarily be too many holes in it.
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That's true. The move towards super tight micro-identification has led us to make small claims very confidently, while being too afraid to say anything big (and often, losing the vocabulary for it.)
That may be why I'm so sympathetic to Austrian thinking
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Some additional thoughts:
- It might be that AI replaces the formulaic empiricists and actually returns the profession to economists who have to understand human motivations and economic theory
- I'm reminded a bit of the leadup to the GFC, when finance became increasingly full of sophisticated mathematicians who lacked any area expertise
- Perhaps the important economic insights (and empirical methods) have already been developed and now we can let AI spit out sound findings on request
- Perhaps there are enough economic enthusiasts who are willing to write about it for free that the profession dies (wages go to zero), because AI makes them productive enough to meet demand
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@remindme in 5 hours
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Enormously so, at least on our side of the pond. Europeans still do a lot of work without sophisticated econometrics or mathematical modeling.
Btw, I'm not convinced this has been a change for the better.