* Observers are also actors. They can and will significantly influence the observed.
* Once observations are revealed at large it'll have short/long term consequences. There's a good reason fed gives multiple indications before changing any parameters such as interest rates, tapering etc.,
* Humans don't necessarily act like rational selfish agents (as economists expect) all the time.
* Economics is often entangled with other aspects such as trade agreements, geopolitics some of which take years and decades to manifest.Whether the stuff you’re observing can read and understand your observations, and then choose to do the exact opposite.
One of the observation of the author is that models work better if the human beings accept to restrict their behavior and follow simple rules. Another observation is that in social science, it is hard to design models that do a prediction significantly better than "tomorrow will behave the same as yesterday".
[0]: http://www.ens-lyon.fr/en/article/research/your-life-numbers...
- Astronomers cannot influence the system they are describing; there's no feedback. In economics there is.
- Astronomy describes systems with a few, simple particles whose inner state is not relevant to the behavior at large. Economics describes (tries to..) systems with many complex 'particles' whose inner state is essential to the behavior at large.
Not saying that this is what's fundamentally separates astronomy from economics, just pointing out some potential differences.
Economics is a dismal science and models rarely predict real word outcomes correctly. It’s more akin to astrology than astronomy.
So when we criticize "economists" are we criticizing the scientists like Galileo and Copernicus that were right and got their books banned, or are we criticizing the ones that supported the political power of the day?
Note that some of those scientist would have genuinely believed their 'church-approved' theories. Just their opponents couldn't challenge them openly without incurring wrath.
And would generic criticism of "scientists" have benefitted science or the established political power at that time?
Would you critique astronomy the same ways as economics? What is the critical difference?
[1] Yes, there was a lot of simultaneous work in other areas as well.