In contrast, econometric literature has seen a huge shift toward identifying causal relations from observational data. More than any other social science, econ

In contrast, econometric literature has seen a huge shift toward identifying causal relations from observational data. More than any other social science, economics has adopted this approach. Experimental fields (Psychology, Medicine) never really had to deal with observational data. Many approaches are not new to statistics, to be sure, but many have been implemented and refined in econometrics. Courses in political science, sociology and management, for example, largely use econometric textbooks and papers nowadays. Why is that the case? Other social sciences have been more data driven before. That is to say, they lacked a coherent theoretical framework that would alert them to causality issues. Economics was early to adopt causal analysis techniques from stats - and look for observational equivalents to experimental science approaches - because the theory framework showed early on that regression based approaches (still being done a lot in sociology and management, for example) are usually not a good idea. It is all a trade-off. Yes, these models are often not accurate, sometimes outright wrong. But, formal theories give you precise assumptions and causal chains, which means they can be quickly discarded as paradigms (General Equilibrium, Game Theoretic Equilibrium Refinements), and crucially, they tell you about empirical issues. This has happened to a MUCH SMALLER degree in social sciences that do not have these formal theories! The notion that economics is behind in terms of empirical approaches compared to other observational social sciences is just not correct. I will give you the point that econ textbooks are often bad in that regard. I mean, the standard micro textbook for grads is really just a treatment of differential manifolds with other names. But those textbooks are not to be read isolation. Intro textbooks I saw, on the other hand, do have real data.