Do you think economics is an art or a science

Economics Economics Questions
1

i find that the economics i learn in school, Keynesian economics, makes no sense and is always in a total mess, it’s chaos to me. In Keynesian economics policies regarding inflation, employment, CAD etc always conflict.

i find the Austrian theory makes more sense, all you need to know is how to refute Keynesians and

study sound money, the free market does its job

anyways back to my question, one guy on Yahoo answers gave this great answer

''Economics uses a lot of mathematics, so people often get fooled into thinking it’s a science. But if you look at the principles that lie behind the mathematics, the so-called laws (e.g. law of supply and demand) are not based on sound experimental data, but on hypotheses.

For example, economists generally assume that people act rationally, because this makes sense. Yet we all know people who act irrationally, and experiments have demonstrated that most people will act irrationally in certain types of financial transaction.

Another problem with economics is that numerical calculations are done on the basis of rather dodgy data. For example, they can’t measure the velocity of money to any degree of accuracy. Unfortunately, dodgy data is all that’s available.

Finally, there are different schools of economists. It’s hard to believe in a science where Keynesians tell you to do one thing and monetarists to do the opposite. Contrast this with physics or engineering, where everyone will come to essentially the same conclusion.

So I would say it’s an art masquerading as a science. (But at least that’s better than sociology, some of whose adherents don’t even accept the validity of the scientific method!)‘’

do you think economics is a science?

2

I think it is a social science. I also believe it is qualitative, not quantitative.

3

I agree with LS. As your quote suggests, economics is merely the study of human behavior. Austrians, however, do not believe it is an empirical science.

You might be interested in some of Hoppe’s writings on this topic, such as:

Economic Science and the Austrian Method
4

For the mainstream (Krugman, Bernanke, Greenspan) it’s an art. You make something up that sounds true that no one can understand to come to the conclusions you want to; Artwork. For the Austrians, or better yet, realists, it’s an exact science.

5

I agree, though interpreting a particular event is always somewhat art, for much the same reason history is. Though the body of economic theory is undoubtedly science.

6

When did the word “art” acquire a negative connotation?

7

What exactly does this mean? There are tons of legitimate quantitative measurements in economics, which leads me to believe that I misunderstand your comment. For example, productive efficiency is measured both quantitatively (amount of items produced) and qualitatively (usefulness of items produced).

8

Economics is science…human behaviour and society knowledge…scientia = knowledge

9

I believe economics to be the study of choices or human action. A praxeological view of human action would indicate that choices are ordinal, not cardinal, and thus are not measurable in the strict mathematic sense.

10

The latter bit indicates you have misunderstood him. Quantitative predictions give precise measurements e.g. how much and when inflation will fall. Austrians do not believe such predictions are possible in economics for a host of reasons (and indeed models offering them tend to collapse over time; the point being statistics in economics are mostly about interpreting particular past circumstances, and not predicting the future, with economic theory itself not being derived from statistics but used for interpreting events) and instead aim for qualitative predictions (e.g. if prices go up, demand will fall ceteris paribus.) If you’ve not done so, give Hoppe’s Economic Science and the Austrian Method a read.

11

So true, just like seeing the science behind the beauty of a painting…