The effect size of an intervention (deworming) on a measured outcome (test scores) is, almost by definition, its efficiency. And that's within economic's wheelhouse if you're studying paper clip manufacturing or schools.

But, ultimately, I think the researchers would probably answer with something closer to "I don't care if it's economics. I consider it both interesting and relevant", and so would the Nobel judges.

Yeah, it doesn’t matter in the end, we have learned something important. But there is some context to all this - (macro)economics has had a huge influence on the world through monetary policy. This influence is waning due to financial crises and the apparent failure of neoliberalism among other things.

Economics has an identity crisis. It is trying to be a science when it is an art/humanity. Rather than embracing it's nature it is trying to be what it is not. It's like Christianity trying to be a science via creation science. It simply does not work.

Thanks for this glib comment, it must be true since you asserted it. Frankly what I find most annoying about this comment is the implicit claim that humans are so complex that we can't possibly study it; that our existing scientific method is inadequate to describe economics.

Unlike any art economics can make predictions, and we can test the validity of such predictions. That our models are insufficient right now doesn't mean we should cast the whole discipline into the toilet.

The commenters on either side of yours make it look like doubting the validity of economics is the province of people too lazy to make a real argument. I really don't want to take their side because of how they're presenting it. But somewhere in that idiocy there's a decent point to be made.

I've always been a bit uneasy about economics because people's behavior depends on their beliefs, and their behavior as economic agents especially depends on their beliefs about the the economic theory that motivated the design of their habitat.

I expect that if a population that grew up in a system designed under assumption X and happened to eat well and always have a roof, then they will behave in a way that confirms theories compatible with X.

On the other hand, if they experienced extreme economic strife under leadership that believes in the validity of X, then--as data points--they're more likely to influence economic theory testing in the opposite way.

How can you know whether your predictions are correct because they're objectively true about human behavior, versus them being correct because your sample set has been influenced by the same economic theory that motivated the prediction in the first place?

Is statistics really so powerful that it can eliminate the circularity from the situation?

The trouble with economics, especially macroeconomics, as a science is that it lacks good predictive power. Science is prediction, not explanation. Economic forecasting ought to work at least as well as weather forecasting, and it doesn't.

> our existing scientific method is inadequate to describe economics.

Agreed.

> we can test the validity of such predictions.

Nope.

> we should cast the whole discipline into the toilet.

Agreed.