bigqueue_qlewisI might be miss characterizing how knowledge in economics is found and then used….but it seems to me that people “witness” economic activity and “interpret” patterns of activity. These humans (call them economists in this case) will describe these patterns and with logic, work to find descriptions for what they noticed going on…..creating simple stories that show their idea in motion. At the same time, other economists work to come up with other situations to both support and tear down this economist’s theory by opening up and at times narrowing down the “test case”.
When all is said and done and the theory is proven (to that point) to be solid, it is incorporated into a “school of economics” where people try to perhaps boil it down to a mathematical representation so it can be used more generally and faster.
I assume all these “theories” / explanations are tested against many inputs to see how they respond…….then I assume the entire model (now implementing this new find) goes through the same “testng”.
Here is an example of one of the “tests” I refer to……this is in the electronics domain, but I think you can see the kind of “mental explanation” followed my math description I refer to above in this. (and the step function test for stability should also be very applicable to economics)\
Is this way of thinking too far off the plantation?