In a recent commentary( in the Guardian, Joris...

In a recent commentary in the Guardian, Joris Luyendijk reminds us not to be fooled by the ‘Nobel’ prize in economics and thereby questions the privilege of economics in this regard. He especially focuses on the fact that the image of the ‘Nobels’ in academia is largely due to the success of natural sciences and draws the conclusion that the ‘Nobel’ in economics creates a misleading impression of economics as an exact and precise, quasi-natural science. And indeed, this issue is contested even within mainstream economics, where empirical researchers often identify economics as a part of the social sciences, while others still uphold the view that economics is “genuine science” just “like the physical sciences” (here).

Another take on this issue is to directly examine the relative properties of economics and the natural sciences and to look for structural differences between these disciplines according to some criterion. Nice examples for such an approach are provided by studies, which explore the issue of replicability in economics. These studies have the advantage that their criterion for comparison - the replicability of empirical results in published papers - is fairly clear-cut and, at the same time, well-established in the natural sciences. Thereby it is interesting to note that economics generally scores rather low on replicability. Although some progress has been made in recent years - especially due to the introduction of rules on the mandatory provision of data and code by journal editors and publishers - the answer to the question “Is Economics Research Replicable?” is up to now still “usually not.”

All the Best,

Jakob