|Peter Boettke|
Nathan Nunn surveys the literature.
The move from "what happened" to "why it happened" is a move I try to tell our PhD students is the necessary move they must make guided by sound economic and political economy theory if they are going to make a contribution to our understanding. Reading this paper of Nunn's alongside of Acemoglu's recent JEP paper "Theory, General Equilibrium, and Political Economy in Development Economics" would be my best advice for our graduate students as they think about setting out their own research agenda that I can give this week.
HT: Tim Harford
"The move from "what happened" to "why it happened""
But these aren't fully independent.
Consider adaptive biological attributes and the origin of species.
Answering the "why it happened" question informs our "what happened" question.
Consider in the case of the origin of money -- you have archeologists answering the "what happened" question -- using primitive everyday economic understanding which explains "why it happened".
And you don't need career enhancing math constructs to do any of this.
Posted by: Greg Ransom | September 29, 2010 at 12:45 PM
Tim Harford's book The Undercover Economist is one of my favorite books to gift. It's a great book to get people thinking and seeing economics in their everyday lives.
Posted by: Jasper | September 29, 2010 at 04:03 PM
Now now, Pete, didn't we all learn from Henry Ford that "history is bunk"? :-)
Posted by: Barkley Rosser | September 29, 2010 at 04:17 PM
So your saying History say History is Bunk? lol
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