Apologies for my pointed tone, but the demotion of Economics as a lesser science due to lack of controlled experiments is a pet peeve of mine.
Economists do run experiments, or work very hard to try to hard quasi-like experiment designs.
Angrist Krueger won a Nobel for showing that increasing minimum wage actually increases overall employment, by utilising data in border towns in NJ/NY where the differing laws across state lines constituted a natural experiment.
Amy Finkelstein won a Bates medal (basically a baby Nobel) for her work in health policy, which involves being the lead investigator in coordinating the large scale Oregon Health Insurance Experiment that randomly assigned participants with health insurance.
It’s even possible, though much more difficult, on the macro side. Scholars such as Emi Nakamura look at high-frequency data of bond markets to see how markets and the economy respond to the actions of the Federal Reserve.
More recently, “General Equilibrium Effects of Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence From Kenya” won the Frisch medal for conducting randomised, large scale cash transfers to low income, isolated rural communities, where due to the isolation, could make it arguably similar to UBI.
Actually good Econ channels:
Money and Macro
TLDR News (though their non UK/global coverage is a bit sus)
National Bureau of Economic Research (live streams economic research conferences, wouldn’t recommend actually watching but you can get a feel for what Econ actually does)
Unlearning Economics (maybe only 70% correct, but very engaging and not as “mainstream”)
Apologies for my pointed tone, but the demotion of Economics as a lesser science due to lack of controlled experiments is a pet peeve of mine.
Economists do run experiments, or work very hard to try to hard quasi-like experiment designs.
Angrist Krueger won a Nobel for showing that increasing minimum wage actually increases overall employment, by utilising data in border towns in NJ/NY where the differing laws across state lines constituted a natural experiment.
Amy Finkelstein won a Bates medal (basically a baby Nobel) for her work in health policy, which involves being the lead investigator in coordinating the large scale Oregon Health Insurance Experiment that randomly assigned participants with health insurance.
It’s even possible, though much more difficult, on the macro side. Scholars such as Emi Nakamura look at high-frequency data of bond markets to see how markets and the economy respond to the actions of the Federal Reserve.
More recently, “General Equilibrium Effects of Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence From Kenya” won the Frisch medal for conducting randomised, large scale cash transfers to low income, isolated rural communities, where due to the isolation, could make it arguably similar to UBI.
Actually good Econ channels:
Money and Macro
TLDR News (though their non UK/global coverage is a bit sus)
National Bureau of Economic Research (live streams economic research conferences, wouldn’t recommend actually watching but you can get a feel for what Econ actually does)
Unlearning Economics (maybe only 70% correct, but very engaging and not as “mainstream”)
Shit tier channels (at least for Econ):
Economics Explained
Kurzgesagt
Infographics Show