The better the question, the worse the answer
Justin Wolfers wrote recently about the level of interaction between economics and other social sciences. In particular, he wonders why economic work is not well represented in a list of the books most cited in social science research. It’s a good question: I find many of the tools and techniques developed by economists are useful in my works studying political phenomena, and I do cite economic research.
One particularly thoughtful commenter on Wolfers’ post notes that economics combines the controversy of addressing everyday issues with the general inaccessibility of chemistry. This conflict may make some people resist the conclusions of economists, ie. strong prior + incomprehensible evidence = small amount of updating.
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