I was Reading an interesting article about science and economics “Science reinvents the economy: The human factor”. I was lead to this by something I read considering economics theory, a long time ago, that I forgot in between my academic’s activities, the behavioral economics.
It is worth to say, that I am a physicist, not trained in economics, we may say I am more like an enthusiast.
The first thing I found in my own experience is that the mathematics involve in economy are not as complex as some “media economist” tell us. The programming involve in traditional economics is straightforward but requires considering lots of variables, that is perhaps the real complication.
Then, the question arises. As a person of science (or a least who effort to make science) economics seems to have more “assumed” controversial statements, than any physical theory I know, the “person” that is an actor in economy is so perfectly rational; even more, economics is not summited to an experimental scrutiny, to check if works or not before it is applied into policies. That makes it not a good candidate to be a traditional or explicit empirical science. In physics, we are going deeper and deeper, and testing as far as we can our hypothesis, I would expect that from a discipline that is so immediately relevant to our lives!. Perhaps I just need to go deeper.
Anyway, going back to behavioral economics - which broadly is economics after considering the psychological factor- psychology is not an exact discipline, in the sense of mathematics and physics, furthermore, the experiments are far more complex and have less accuracy, for example, a measure of the levels of happiness or well-being in a society implies that the mere question about happiness jams the “real” result. This because of the psychological nature of human beings and his attention.
After reaching this point, about we being humans, It is surprising to me that on the large scale policy application of economics measures of the last century, so little has been said or made considering the human factor, it was take into account of course, but mostly in marketing and sales, but not as how the well-being of us, humans! have a relevant impact on decision making, consuming, better disposition to pay taxes, to ensure our lives, the very engine of societies… this puzzles me… However, I just want to share my concerns with you.
I mean, our attention deserves attention.
Hope this gives somethings to reflect about.
In case you are interested, this is the link where I started about this.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227111-800-science-reinvents-the-economy-the-human-factor/
Best of lucks!