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Comment by jostmey | Hacker News Reader

From what little exposure I had as a student in Biological sciences to the economics department at the University of Chicago, I saw the economics department as an excuse to do lots of sophisticated mathematics and proofs. I never heard people in the economics department talk about collecting data or measuring the flow of money. It was always prove this or solve that. It was the opposite of science and very much like theology -- theory divorced from testable observation

Edit, I need to emphasize the use of the word little

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> It was always prove this or solve that

Sounds like almost all of my ee, cs, and math classes. If your are implying that having students, whom are learning the basics of the "trade", learn how and why the models work the way they work is bad then biological sciences must be operating on a different paradigm that relies on just accepting what you're told.

> opposite of science and very much like theology

What?? Math and logic proofs are part of theology now? You can't mean that so can you please explain more.

Economic research can be roughly divided into three subfields: Macroeconomics, Micro theory, and Empirical Micro.

The first 2/3 of an undergrad curriculum at most universities is all macro and micro theory. So, most of what an undergrad sees is prove this or solve that.

But far more econ faculty focus on empirical work for their personal research.

It's possible that we focus on theory because it spreads economic orthodoxy faster than empirical work. But economists spend much less time doing theory when they are outside undergraduate classrooms.

> It's possible that we focus on theory because it spreads economic orthodoxy faster than empirical work

Or for the same reasons we start physics in a frictionless, idealized environment.

Pretty sure when I started physics in high school we started with measuring trolleys accelerating (or not) done an inclined run timed with ticker tape and covered the maths alongside the experiments.

Edit: I seem to remember friction being addressed pretty quickly as it was required to explain why your trolley would stop accelerating.... [NB It's been 30+ years]

Why would they talk about data?

Data collection in economics is often very much outside the scope of economics departments. Not only because it's beyond the budgets of individual departments to maintain the necessary personnel, but because it's hard to get people to disclose that sort of information. That task falls mostly on the lap of government and international organizations, who have the sort of legitimacy to pull that off. Besides that, there's experimental data, surveys sent out to private organizations and private (closed) databases. But the majority of the data used in econ deparments was produced elsewhere.

If what you wanted to hear someone talk about "measuring the flow of money", you'd probably be better off in some Federal Reserve bank.

Data is the result of observations. What is science without observation?

There are observations. Just go to http://data.worldbank.org if you want some. My point was that people in deparments aren't the ones making them.

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