Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T10:14:14.826Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Economics is not statistics (and vice versa)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2020

Peter T. Leeson*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: pleeson@gmu.edu

Abstract

Economic analysis is a theoretical approach, not an empirical one. It is a way of thinking, not a way of testing. An analysis that has an empirical component can be economic without being quantitative: economics is not statistics. An atheoretical analysis can never be economic, no matter how impressive its regressions: statistics is not economics.

Type
Comment
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bates, R. H., Greif, A., Levi, M., Rosenthal, J.-L. and Weingast, B. R. (1998), Analytic Narratives, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Becker, G. S. (1976), The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, G. S. (1993), ‘The Economic Way of Looking at Life’, Journal of Political Economy, 101: 385409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boulding, K. E. (1941), Economic Analysis, New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Coase, R. H. (1978), ‘Economics and Contiguous Discipline’, Journal of Legal Studies, 7: 201211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coase, R. H. (1998), ‘The New Institutional Economics’, American Economic Review, 88: 7274.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (1988), Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for Modern Institutional Economics, Cambridge: Polity Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leeson, P. T. (2020), ‘Logic is A Harsh Mistress: Welfare Economics for Economists’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 16: 145150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mises, L. v. (1949), Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Robbins, L. (1932), The Nature and Significance of Economic Science, London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Rodrik, D. (2015), Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science, New York: W. W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Skarbek, D. (2020), ‘Qualitative Research Methods for Institutional Analysis’, Journal of Institutional Economics, published online. doi:10.1017/S174413741900078X.CrossRefGoogle Scholar