What do I mean by "people like me?" Well, I am someone who understands the
importance of economics (in my case, for history) but don't really understand
the methodologies. In fact, I'm skeptical. When someone uses the population of
Vietnam in 1500 as one datapoint in a world-wide analysis of development
outcomes, I wonder where on earth they got their numbers. Also I bailed out of
math at an early stage. I don't understand the significance of log and why it
helps solve certain kinds of problems.
Noah Smith is an economist who writes interesting things, mostly on
contemporary problems,
and he has written a long piece on what is the appropriate standard for
winning the Nobel Economics Prize
is. In doing so he says a lot about the state of the field.
If this interests you, have fun.
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