That’s the only scientific part about it but afaik it still only applies to micro not macroeconomics.

To quote Charlie Munger: “it economics is not behavioural, what the hell is it?”

Politics. Economics is persuasion. It's about some people telling other people how they should act "because".

It's not descriptive or empirical, and never has been.

The more honest economists will tell you it's considered part of moral philosophy.

I can recommend the book "Licence to be Bad: How Economics Corrupted Us" by Jonathan Aldred - it makes a pretty strong case that the way economics has influenced politics over the last few decades has had a pretty strong negative impact on society:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43267091-licence-to-be-b...

Moral philosophy is a part of it and how it is often used but not all of it. It is possible to be objectively incorrect and it becomes rapidly apparent.

Use fixed universal prices regardless of location and you /will/ have problems. The Soviets tried unsuccessfully to do a value calculation for their existence.

Economics points out for instance that stopping smuggling without offering an alternative serves as a subsidy for the successful smugglers.

Doing the math to point out that say a deflationary currency would eventually become worthless as a currency is likewise objective.

The problem is that this is basically all that behavioral economics is good for.

Behavioral economics is just a branch of psychology. A collection of trite rules of thumb relating to how people tend to act in certain "economic" situations.

It makes for good reading in the Harvard Business Review.

Is this true? I've tried to find more depth than this and have admittedly struggled in the past

No, it's not. longdelay has their own interests and thinks that adherence to those interests defines the value of a branch of science for everyone.

So, what became known as behavioural economics was 100% started by two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.

While they investigated new topics (i.e. economics), their methodologies were 100% within the standard practice of social and cognitive psychology at the time.

They were then awarded the Nobel Prize for this work. Now, not everyone in the field came from psychology, but a lot did, and the methods used in behavioural economics are essentially indistinguishable from those used in psychology.

For references, Thinking Fast and Slow is probably the best source, as one of the original authors describes their research program.

I understand what you are saying, but on the other hand we don't call calculus "physics" just because it was introduced by Newton (and Leibniz, yeah yeah).

Also, modern economics use some heavy mathematical tools, yet nobody says its a branch of mathematics.

And lastly, psychology is in my opinion one of the most important branches of science right now.

I think that behavioural economics is it's own thing now, but it is heavily inspired by psychology (and, in it's turn, has helped to inspire psychology).

I agree with you on psychology's importance, but that's probably because I am a psychologist :)

Why is psychology important right now? What have psychologists done for me lately?

It's really true. When you understand this, it makes you realize how shallow and empty so much of economics really is.

Macro investing literature is what you should read if you want to understand the economy. It's less focused on high level concepts and more on specific data points and how they relate to and impact one another.