From what we have been told, what makes science science is the ability to perform controlled experiments to verify or reject hypotheses. However due to the nature of economics and the fact that there are far too many factors like sociology and psychology to control for, it’s impossible to do controlled experiments in the economy. Why is it considered a branch of science?
In: 10
As others already noted, it is considered a social science. Not a natural science.
That said, in economics you can often do controlled experiments. You split groups of people, make one a control group, and do an economic intervention for the other. Universal basic incomes is an interesting idea for this. And relatively easier to control for.
Things like the dictator game (more behavioral economics perhaps) and many similar experiments are controlled. But it’s fair to say these things are controlled experiments. Not ideal, not perfect, but they are attempts at such.
Even better, you find a lot of natural experiments. The usa is particularly good for that as different states adopt economic policies (and other policies) in different years. Which helps to tease out the causality more so than in other areas. Abortion is a controversial one as different states legalised abortion in different years and thus you can pull out the economic (and other social) impact of this.
Comparing countries that are roughly similar does the same thing. Again more behavioral economics, but comparing the organ donation of Austria and Germany (as they’re culturally similar) helps keep things ‘all other things being equal’.
In short, you can do many controlled experiments. It may be tougher to pull out other factors (tho many complex statistically regression techniques exist to do so), there is certainly a science to this.
Latest Answers