Is Economics Finally Becoming Trustworthy?

“There are two things you are better off not watching in the making: sausages and econometric estimates. This is a sad and decidedly unscientific state of affairs we find ourselves in. Hardly anyone takes data analyses seriously. Or perhaps more accurately, hardly anyone takes anyone else’s data analyses seriously.”

That is the scathing critique that economist Ed Leamer leveled at empirical research in his famed 1983 article “Lets Take the Con Out of Econometrics”. At the time, he meant...