Economists envious of physicists? Don't be.

Steven Postrel has an interesting post up about economists' supposed envy of physicists. I am the opposite of this: a physics guy who wishes he knew more about economics.

I suspect the thing economists wished they had was a level of determinism that physicists enjoy. Which is to say, a law of physics might approach 100% accuracy while a law of economics never can. But this is a false competition.

Economics is much more like medicine than it is like physics. At its best, economics is prescriptive: take these steps and you can hope for a certain outcome to greater or lesser levels of confidence. As time goes by and we gain a greater history of experiments and outcomes, we can increase our assurance that certain decisions will lead to certain results.

Like medicine, economists go by an artful combination of science, experience and hope to improve our odds of success. Physicists operate on these things as well, but their experiments are much more likely to give us a yes-or-no answer.

And, perhaps most like medicine, economic outcomes are ultimately based on the will of the human animal, whose predictability eludes us too often.

Physics was incredibly valuable to me educationally, as it taught me a way of understanding systems and their dynamics. It's the ability to characterize how different forces interact as part of a whole. There is no right and wrong so much as there are dynamics to be understood.

I suppose this is what attracts me to economics, because in and of itself, it does not determine right and wrong. Rather, like physics, it describes the systems and the relationships among its members.

Increase the minimum wage, expect a decrease in employment. Increase the money supply, expect that money to be worth less (aka inflation). These things do not describe right and wrong, but rather the fundamental economic precept of the trade-off. Only when we decide that one side of the equation is more important than the other do economic ideas gain moral weight.

Another thing I learned in physics (and philosophy) is that the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. I am something of a free-market ideologue, an unattractive quality. But I will be the first to tell you that, for all my wonky economics reading, the sliver that I understand pales in comparison to the bulk that I don't.

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Here is some of that wonky sexy econ stuff, I suggest checking them out.

Greg Mankiw (former Bush guy, too smart for me)
Econlog (Arnold Kling and Bryan Kaplan)
Asymmetrical Information (Jane Galt aka Megan Mcardle, erstwhile anonymous Economist writer)

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PS, did I say dynamics a few times? Mr. Postrel happens to be married to this person.

Comments

[Loretta Breuning]

Economics tries to be like meteorology. The problem is that weather depends on physical particles, but the economy depends on human choices. Equations and formulas don't predict our choices because we constantly change in response to past experience. Economists get paid for forecasting, whether their forecasts are right or wrong.