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I'm surprised there seems to be have been no HN discussion on this years Economics prize. Or are my HS search skills lacking?

daxat_staglatz 8y ago
I haven't found any, either. This is a shame because economics is already a computational discipline and increasingly so. It can be of interest to the HN crowd. There is an awful lot of programming done by people that are not professional programmers. As an economist myself, I think code have become so central to our profession that we can no longer afford to ignore software engineering best practices. Conversely, there may be quite a few topics in computational economics that interest programmers. For instance, an awful lot of macroeconomics - including to an extent Romer's sub-field, endogenous growth theory - is essentially programming in Dynare [0] and doing computer simulations. Nordhaus got the prize for developing (quite basic, actually) simulation models that integrate the economic systems and environmental systems. See for instance there [1]. Micro-simulation is of course a big area where programming and economics meet - you can follow development on github [2, 3]. This is code that has an enormous impact on society, as it is used as a basis to evaluate the effects of policies. Econometrics, aka statistics for economics, is also a big area where programmers could contribute to economic research. There is a big push to adapt ML techniques to solve economists' problems, eg Athey's research [4]. [0] http://www.dynare.org/ http://www.dynare.org/ [1] https://sites.google.com/site/williamdnordhaus/dice-rice https://sites.google.com/site/williamdnordhaus/dice-rice [2] https://github.com/openfisca https://github.com/openfisca [3] https://github.com/InseeFr/Destinie-2 https://github.com/InseeFr/Destinie-2 [4] https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.04342 https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.04342
- nl 8y ago
  This is a great comment. I believe the NY Fed has open source economic models in Julia, too.
  - daxat_staglatz 8y ago
    Indeed : https://github.com/FRBNY-DSGE/DSGE.jl https://github.com/FRBNY-DSGE/DSGE.jl
dhimes 8y ago
Maybe part of the problem is that unless you delve beyond layman level (and maybe even if you do?) economics is close-coupled to political views, and those start wars- so we tend to steer clear on this board.
- cirgue 8y ago
  The dismal science has earned the name many times over: no one wants to read a long-winded epistle on the relationship between bond yields and non-farm employment in Alabama between 1993 and 1998, and that's where a lot of the interesting parts of econ lie.
rchaud 8y ago
Likely because there aren't too many Economics majors on this forum (I am, BTW). From what I've seen on previous HN posts on economics topics, the discussion veers towards "Economics isn't a real science" variety, with the majority of the posts going back on forth on that comment, rather than the actual topic of the article.

daxat_staglatz 8y ago

I haven't found any, either. This is a shame because economics is already a computational discipline and increasingly so. It can be of interest to the HN crowd. There is an awful lot of programming done by people that are not professional programmers. As an economist myself, I think code have become so central to our profession that we can no longer afford to ignore software engineering best practices. Conversely, there may be quite a few topics in computational economics that interest programmers. For instance, an awful lot of macroeconomics - including to an extent Romer's sub-field, endogenous growth theory - is essentially programming in Dynare [0] and doing computer simulations. Nordhaus got the prize for developing (quite basic, actually) simulation models that integrate the economic systems and environmental systems. See for instance there [1]. Micro-simulation is of course a big area where programming and economics meet - you can follow development on github [2, 3]. This is code that has an enormous impact on society, as it is used as a basis to evaluate the effects of policies. Econometrics, aka statistics for economics, is also a big area where programmers could contribute to economic research. There is a big push to adapt ML techniques to solve economists' problems, eg Athey's research [4]. [0] http://www.dynare.org/ http://www.dynare.org/ [1] https://sites.google.com/site/williamdnordhaus/dice-rice https://sites.google.com/site/williamdnordhaus/dice-rice [2] https://github.com/openfisca https://github.com/openfisca [3] https://github.com/InseeFr/Destinie-2 https://github.com/InseeFr/Destinie-2 [4] https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.04342 https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.04342

nl 8y ago
This is a great comment. I believe the NY Fed has open source economic models in Julia, too.
- daxat_staglatz 8y ago
  Indeed : https://github.com/FRBNY-DSGE/DSGE.jl https://github.com/FRBNY-DSGE/DSGE.jl

dhimes 8y ago

Maybe part of the problem is that unless you delve beyond layman level (and maybe even if you do?) economics is close-coupled to political views, and those start wars- so we tend to steer clear on this board.

cirgue 8y ago
The dismal science has earned the name many times over: no one wants to read a long-winded epistle on the relationship between bond yields and non-farm employment in Alabama between 1993 and 1998, and that's where a lot of the interesting parts of econ lie.

rchaud 8y ago

Likely because there aren't too many Economics majors on this forum (I am, BTW). From what I've seen on previous HN posts on economics topics, the discussion veers towards "Economics isn't a real science" variety, with the majority of the posts going back on forth on that comment, rather than the actual topic of the article.