Time to reject the privileging of economic theory over empirical evidence? A reply to Lawson

TY - JOUR

T1 - Time to reject the privileging of economic theory over empirical evidence? A reply to Lawson

AU - Juselius, Katarina

N1 - JEL classification: A10, B40, C30, C50, E00, E10, E20, E60

PY - 2011/3/1

Y1 - 2011/3/1

N2 - The present financial and economic crisis has revealed a systemic failure of academic economics and emphasised the need to re-think how to model economic phenomena. Tony Lawson seems concerned that critics of standard models now will fill academic journals with contributions that make the same methodological mistakes, albeit in a slightly different guise. In particular, he is rather sceptical of the usefulness of mathematical statistical models, such as the Cointegrated VAR model, as a way of learning about economic mechanisms. In this paper I discuss whether this is a relevant claim and argue that it is likely to be based on a misunderstanding of what a proper statistical analysis is and can offer. In particular, I argue that the strong evidence of (near) unit roots and (structural) breaks in economic variables suggests that standard economic models need to be modified or changed to incorporate these strong features of the data. Furthermore, I argue that a strong empirical methodology that allows data to speak freely about economic mechanisms, such as the CVAR, would ensure that important signals in the data are not silenced by prior restrictions. Adequately applied such models would provide us with an early warning system signalling when the economy is moving seriously out of equilibrium.

AB - The present financial and economic crisis has revealed a systemic failure of academic economics and emphasised the need to re-think how to model economic phenomena. Tony Lawson seems concerned that critics of standard models now will fill academic journals with contributions that make the same methodological mistakes, albeit in a slightly different guise. In particular, he is rather sceptical of the usefulness of mathematical statistical models, such as the Cointegrated VAR model, as a way of learning about economic mechanisms. In this paper I discuss whether this is a relevant claim and argue that it is likely to be based on a misunderstanding of what a proper statistical analysis is and can offer. In particular, I argue that the strong evidence of (near) unit roots and (structural) breaks in economic variables suggests that standard economic models need to be modified or changed to incorporate these strong features of the data. Furthermore, I argue that a strong empirical methodology that allows data to speak freely about economic mechanisms, such as the CVAR, would ensure that important signals in the data are not silenced by prior restrictions. Adequately applied such models would provide us with an early warning system signalling when the economy is moving seriously out of equilibrium.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - economic crisis

KW - Dahlem report

KW - CVAR approach

KW - theory-first data-first

KW - imperfect knowledge expectations

KW - non-stationary data

U2 - 10.1093/cje/beq024

DO - 10.1093/cje/beq024

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0309-166X

VL - 35

SP - 423

EP - 436

JO - Cambridge Journal of Economics

JF - Cambridge Journal of Economics

IS - 2

ER -