Econ Factbook
1. "Econfactbook.org is a economic data website that attempts to bring greater transparency to the world economy... The format of Econ Factbook is designed to eliminate excess statistics and only display the structure of an economy. By focusing on the structure, I believe it can help people better understand an economy." (Transparency and the world economy, 2018)
2. "I hope that someday every city and state in the world could have their own page using the same format. Currently economic data about localities is very difficult to find on the internet and I believe centralizing this data in a clear format would be useful." (Transparency and the world economy, 2018)
3. "The format of Econ Factbook is based on the circular flow of income model. The format has a section for each of the five main economic sectors: households, companies, government, banks and the central bank. Each section has a few statistics to illustrate the condition of that sector. In addition to these sections, the format has a section for employment, industries and international accounts." (Transparency and the world economy, 2018)
Current events and academic economics
4. "My undergraduate economics education has been very useful to me and I learned great information. I'm happy to have learned many demand and supply graphs along with other mathematical theories. But as a whole, analysis of current events was not the focus. In order to know what was going on in the real world, I had to read The Economist and other publications outside of class." (Current events and academic economics, 2018)
5. "That's not to say that academic economists completely ignore current events; there are some examples of great current event analysis in economic journals. But as a whole, I believe that current events is of secondary importance within academic economics." (Current events and academic economics, 2018)
6. "Before the financial crisis, there should have been academic economists devoted to analyzing exotic financial products in the actual financial system. These economists would have published papers maybe as early as 2005 to ring the alarm about the widespread fraud subprime mortgage securities. Although this type of work would have been useful, it was largely absent." (Current events and academic economics, 2018)
7. "I believe economists would benefit from reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis. The book explains how hedge fund manager Michael Burry was able to predict the subprime mortgage financial crisis long before anyone else. On the other hand, academic economists were largely blind to the impending crisis." (How to predict a financial crisis, 2017)
Economic statements
8. "I believe the goal of economics is to make accurate representations of economic phenomena. I regard this is the purpose of any branch of knowledge." (Evaluating economic statements, 2017)
9. "When I think about economics, I divide the discipline into five types of statements. Here are the five types: what economic policy should be, historical economic phenomena, current economic phenomena, future economic phenomena, general economic phenomena." (Five types of economic statements, 2018)
10. "Building a DSGE model is cool, but it's only a statement. I believe it's more important to find evidence that supports or disputes an economic statement in order to determine its accuracy." (Evaluating economic statements, 2017)
Confounding variables
11. "There are real mechanical relationships in the social realm that accurately fit mathematical equations. Although I think such relationships exist, I'm more inclined to believe that the vast majority of social reality does not operate mechanistically. There are too many confounding variables in the social realm that can't be inserted into a mathematical equation." (Current events and academic economics, 2018)
12. "Applying the scientific method (i.e. controlled experiments) to social reality is a difficult task. Quasi-experimental methods are worth developing, but we should always be wary about unseen confounding variables. Despite these difficulties, I believe that there are real economic relationships that can be discovered using econometrics." (Current events and academic economics, 2018)
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
