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2 Comments
I must admit I know little here. Can you explain why this is the case?
For the longest time (and it is still unfortunately the case) Economics as an academic discipline has been plagued by a monstrous dogmatism. In an attempt to be the most scientific of the social sciences, they have done a laudable job in incorporating mathematical modeling techniques.
The problem is that they forgot the OTHER side of science: empiricism. A model is only a model. It has to be tested against the real world to see how well it holds up. Economics has only recently gotten the hang of that.
Imagine where we’d be if there were only theoretical physicists in the world, and NO experimental physicists testing those theories! We’d still think the sun revolved around the earth. After all, we had a mathematical model that showed how it could happen.
During the second half of the 20th century, economists started to question some of the classical theories based on their own real world observations. This led to a flood of papers offering alternative models. It also led to a new school of economists who take their cues from cognitive psychology, anthropology, and biology who took seriously the need to do actual experiments, and to do field work, to determine how people ACTUALLY act in these situation.
It’s taken so long, I think, because the social sciences are more dogmatic than their hard sciences counterparts. There are less well defined rules of how to prove your opponents wrong. Thankfully this is changing.