andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1280 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Econometrician and statistician Dale Poirier writes: 24 years ago (1988, Journal of Economics Perspectives) I [Poirier] noted cognitive dissonance among some economists who treat the agents in their theoretical framework as Bayesians, but then analyze the data (even in the same paper!) as a frequentist. Recently, I have found similar cases in cognitive science. I suspect other disciplines exhibit such behavior. Do you know of any examples in political science? My reply: I don’t know of any such examples in political science. Game theoretic models are popular in poli sci, but I haven’t seen much in the way of models of Bayesian decision making. Here are two references (not in political science) that might be helpful. 1. I have argued that the utility model (popular in economics and political science as a way of providing “microfoundations” for analyses of aggregate behavior) is actually more of a bit of folk-psychology that should not be taken seriously. To me, it is si
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Econometrician and statistician Dale Poirier writes: 24 years ago (1988, Journal of Economics Perspectives) I [Poirier] noted cognitive dissonance among some economists who treat the agents in their theoretical framework as Bayesians, but then analyze the data (even in the same paper! [sent-1, score-1.079]
2 Recently, I have found similar cases in cognitive science. [sent-3, score-0.273]
3 Do you know of any examples in political science? [sent-5, score-0.255]
4 My reply: I don’t know of any such examples in political science. [sent-6, score-0.255]
5 Game theoretic models are popular in poli sci, but I haven’t seen much in the way of models of Bayesian decision making. [sent-7, score-0.751]
6 Here are two references (not in political science) that might be helpful. [sent-8, score-0.237]
7 I have argued that the utility model (popular in economics and political science as a way of providing “microfoundations” for analyses of aggregate behavior) is actually more of a bit of folk-psychology that should not be taken seriously. [sent-10, score-0.807]
8 To me, it is silly that many economists and political scientists give this model such prominence. [sent-11, score-0.472]
9 Utility theory can be a helpful normative model in many situations, but I don’t think it should be anything close to foundational as 2. [sent-12, score-0.445]
10 Are you familiar with the work of Josh Tenenbaum? [sent-13, score-0.061]
11 He is a cognitive scientist at MIT who has been working on Bayesian models for human reasoning and also Bayesian methods for fitting such models given data from psychological experiments. [sent-14, score-0.648]
12 It seems that many economists believe both a and b, so I don’t necessarily see any cognitive dissonance in using non-Bayesian statistical inference while modeling behavior as Bayesian. [sent-17, score-1.22]
13 The funny thing is, I believe not-A and not-B, so my preference would be to use Bayesian inference for non-Bayesian models of behavior. [sent-18, score-0.576]
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Introduction: Rajiv Sethi writes the above in a discussion of a misunderstanding of the economics of Keynes. The discussion is interesting. According to Sethi, Keynes wrote that, in a depression, nominal wages might be sticky but in any case a decline in wages would not do the trick to increase hiring. But many modern economics writers have missed this. For example, Gary Becker writes, “Keynes and many earlier economists emphasized that unemployment rises during recessions because nominal wage rates tend to be inflexible in the downward direction. . . . A fall in price stimulates demand and reduces supply until they are brought back to rough equality.” Whether Becker is empirically correct is another story, but in any case he is misinterpreting Keynes. But the actual reason I’m posting here is in reaction to Sethi’s remark quoted in the title above, in which he endorses a 1975 paper by James Tobin on wages and employment but remarks that Tobin’s paper did not include the individual-level de
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