Advanced Search

What do Economists Know?

Talk to any of your friends who are doing hard sciences like physics and chemistry and they might be rather dismissive of economics. 'It's not a proper science' is often a comment made about the subject. The jokes about economists never being able to make a decision are well documented.

Economics is regarded as a social science. Where does the tag 'science' come from? We tend to think of science as identifying facts and replicating experiments to verify facts. It is difficult to do this with economics because it deals with human behaviour and human behaviour is rarely predictable and tends not to be replicated exactly when repeated. The arguments within the discipline between different schools of thought give further support to the idea that economists can never agree on anything. If any or all of these things are true then what is the point of studying a subject that ultimately knows nothing? What do economists actually know?

Economics is a social science - it is difficult to be precise and experiment in the same way that other sciences like physics and chemistry can. Does this mean economics does not have value? Copyright: Miss C Glass, from stock.xchng.

This resource will look at some of the central points in economics and asks what the basis is for the knowledge that economists claim to know about these things. It is based around a paper written by Alan Budd, a former Chief Economic Advisor to the Treasury, who is currently Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford University. The paper appeared in the journal 'World Economics' in 2004.

Pages in the Series

• What do Economists Know? - Activity
• What do Economists Know? - Tasks