Mustang19, because you continue to point to such papers, I can see that the lesson of Bastiat’s parable of the broken window is still lost on you. Maybe I can explain this better:
Empirical economics would take the broken window as a given and ask whether it generates economic activity. After some period of time has elapsed, it would look at the economic record and conclude that, yes, the broken window did generate economic activity. In other words, it only takes into account what is seen, i.e. what is directly observed. It does not take into account what is not seen, i.e. what can’t be directly observed but can nonetheless be logically inferred. Bastiat’s whole point, then, is that empirical economics misses half of the picture.