How Will Machine Learning Impact Economics? (Guido Imbens, Josh Angrist, Isaiah Andrews)

[@MarginalRevolutionUniversity]

This is Nobel Conversations episode 4 of 4. Watch the rest of the series here: mru.io/oqn Check out Josh Angrist’s Mastering Econometrics course: mru.io/ik0

[@Sheeshening]

This was too short, both could have easily elaborated on multiple points, these formats would best run for ~2-3h, with executive summary style shortened clip versions like this and then a third perhaps even fourth tier of ‘viral’ content for the 10min and shorts brackets. Still, thanks to MRU and of course the three.

[@user-it5zc7js8d]

Great series, thank you so much for this content. I'm new to economics and I just found this channel, and it's all been really informative so far. And it's so fascinating to hear from these guys it's like we have a peek into this almost whole different world of researchers at the forefront of economics. I didn't understand all of the statistics terms they were throwing around, but I see it as an incentive to watch the econometrics series! Hoping there will be more like this!

[@MarginalRevolutionUniversity]

Welcome aboard! Thanks for the nice comment. -Roman

[@jackh7626]

Now this is the type of content that everyone should watch

[@angusgreaves]

Would love to see a longer debate between these two incredibly intelligent researchers on this topic

[@pjakobsen]

Angrist is right. Ignore the hype cycles.

[@mickeymaples4928]

Is it though? Both of these economists were the "hype" when they made their casual inference paper. We need to look ahead the same way they did in the 90s

[@noahjones4925]

Angriest doesn’t know much about machine learning. It is not just this nonlinear curve fitting estimator. It could be used as representations (i.e patient clinical notes or products) where crude ones introduce measuring bias. It can be used for causal discovery as well.

[@sahanglp3i-271]

We must aware that Economics is a social science, there are so many variables that cannot be quantified. Therefore, too much mathematics will bring disaster outcome in Economics. We must learn in what happened in the 1950s and 1960s that we had a huge formula for Economics (particularly in Finance) that couldn't work. 😁

[@vinayakansajeev]

👏

[@stlouisix3]

Josh 'Angrist' what a surname😂

[@shirafudee]

The end of the economic calculation "problem" altogether.

[@minoadlawan4583]

No need for that air quotes. Economic calculation problem is a real thing. Central planning is shit and will probably be in the future. Cute try, though.

[@shirafudee]

@@minoadlawan4583 The reason it was in quotes is because the ecp is hilariously ironic in and of itself. Also, ECP has been framed in complete ignorance of what capitalism is. Capitalism is not just the exchange happening in the markets but also includes the production process with its dehumanising division of labour, and consumption units of family etc. Moreover, Mises and co. fall victim to what Lukacs following Marx called reification, wherein a part of the society is taken to be in isolation from other parts of the society and studied as if it functions according to its own laws in the manner of physical nature itself. Thus, Mises and co. assume that economics can be studied in isolation from class struggle and politics, which is simply untrue. The ECP wrongly assumes markets to be the only efficient way to distribute products of labour - through price signals - in complete ignorance of the reality where markets waste resources and people who do not have any buying power and thus are not able to affect the markets through price signals are excluded, thus, you have people who are too poor to afford food, housing, healthcare etc. even though there is an abundance of these use-values, for example enough food is produced for 10 billion people and even then there are billions suffering from chronic energy deficiency. Moreover, as capitalism necessarily produces wealth simultaneously with poverty, you have market producing commodities tailored for the Uber-rich and ignoring those without buying power. Also there is the huge issue of periodic crises of overproduction and underconsumption, structural unemployment which plagues capitalism and can only one be solved through the abolition of capitalism itself. Moreover, economists, Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran have pointed out just how much resources capitalism wastes through advertising, planned obsolescence, etc.

[@dmtlover3128]

​@@shirafudee So tbh I think central planning could help fix aggregate issues like food, housing, healthcare etc but when those issues get too Individual and demand has more elasticity that's where central planning kind of fails. I would totally agree we could feed everyone living on this earth if we wanted to and still have some left over, but say people wanted watermelon specifically. Not oranges, apples, beef, turkey, just watermelon more than they wanted other foods. How would central planners begin to get that information and change production in a timely manner? Even with AI I would still be skeptical because managing millions of people's wants and needs in a nation would be a load on the software and would probably be better decentralized since its less of a load. Another thing I want to say is during the post war reconstruction we saw massive growth in the middle class that were buying said commodities and luxry goods, investing in stocks, etc. And your avg person was able to benefit heavily from the wealth society created. It takes a capitalist to manage a business, workers to create the businesses value, and investors to provide capital so that everything goes forward, if one falls the others go with it so they should all be held in high regard. My personal problem with the status quo is that labour is disrespected especially seeing how important it is for a society, unions that once shown how important the value workers bring are no more since lack of labour law enforcement and bad trade deals with nations that literally work their workers to death are harming our workers. But I'd disagree with socialist a little bit saying they're leeches since they do serve a good purpose they just take too much and devalue workers. (oh and landlords are also a problem, they need to be exterminated.)

[@1bol1]

@@shirafudee Do you think Austrian economics is simply microeconomics about single isolated markets? The business cycle is a heavily studied field among "Mises and co.". check it out. Marx's system doesn't solve any of these problems, it just says "this is a problem".

[@toomanymarys7355]

@@dmtlover3128 Odd how the more tightly controlled the central planning of housing and healthcare is, the worse results, particularly for outliers. Housing is only good if you have replacement rate reproduction because when people don't have housing they feel they can live in, they don't have kids, if they have any ability to not have them. Which leads to the observation (which is confirmed by simply asking people in the same culture!) that people on average actually are happier in a mud hut than a high rise....