Is Economics the “Physics of Social Sciences” ? A Mirage

Abstract

In dialog with an well-known and controversial book of two French economists (Cahuc and Zylberberg (2016)), we propose, in this article, to point out the mirage implied in attempts to consider economics as the “physics of the social sciences”. Given the availability of large datasets and the development of sophisticated statistical/econometric techniques, the viability of experimental (or quasi-experimental) evaluations would have made it possible the economics to make the leap to integrate the select group of “hard sciences”. We argue that this up-grade assumption does not materialize, considering that certain idiosyncrasies of physics, medicine, etc. (such as regularity, generalization of results, etc.) are not possible in the case of economics. Permeating this debate are the problems associated with identifying the boundaries between competing paradigms and interpretations that cannot be considered scientific.

Keywords: scientific paradigms, experimental evaluation, hard-sciences, empirical evidence, economics.

JEL Classification: A2, B40, B4, C90