Given the complex interdisciplinary nature of societal issues, studying the basics of economics might make you overconfident that you can solve societal problems. Take, for example, supply and demand. The standard supply and demand model will tell you that having/increasing the minimum wage will automatically increase unemployment. But if we look at actual empiricalevidenceitshows usthat it doesn’t. Overrelying on simple economic models might mislead us about which policies will actually help people, while a more holistic look at the social sciences as a whole may counter that.
I don’t see how this can possible be a knock on economics as a field (even if we grant for the sake of argument your somewhat selective citing of the academic literature here) since your sources for the ‘actual empirical evidence’ are economics papers published by economists in economics journals. It looks like you, like other social scientists, agree that the gold standard for ‘actual empirical evidence’ on social questions is citations to economics papers.
I’m not knocking economics as a field otherwise I wouldn’t study/write about economics, I’m knocking overrelying on simple economic models to the detriment of a complete picture. That’s why I cite evidence of simple economic models failing (which are obviously published in economic journals) and talk about the value that other disciplines can bring. If you think my citing is bad, perhaps you’d like to present some better sources?
I don’t see how this can possible be a knock on economics as a field (even if we grant for the sake of argument your somewhat selective citing of the academic literature here) since your sources for the ‘actual empirical evidence’ are economics papers published by economists in economics journals. It looks like you, like other social scientists, agree that the gold standard for ‘actual empirical evidence’ on social questions is citations to economics papers.
I’m not knocking economics as a field otherwise I wouldn’t study/write about economics, I’m knocking overrelying on simple economic models to the detriment of a complete picture. That’s why I cite evidence of simple economic models failing (which are obviously published in economic journals) and talk about the value that other disciplines can bring. If you think my citing is bad, perhaps you’d like to present some better sources?