IS FREAKONOMICS RUINING ECONOMICS?

IS FREAKONOMICS RUINING ECONOMICS? Scheiber’s article which explained Levitt’s approach had the provocative title “Freaks and Geeks; How Freakonomics is ruining the dismal science.” His claim was that Levitt may be shaping a a generation of young economists who were devoting too much effort to looking for natural experiments and were consequently spending too much time on unimportant problems that they could say something useful about. Scheiber juxtaposed another economist, James Heckman, a Nobel Prize winner, who deals with important questions that are difficult to answer—where nature has not performed a good experiment. Scheiber cites an example Heckman gives— developing a “comprehensive measure of all the obstacles a child might face in life–education, nutrition, family environment, and so on.” Heckman complains that the problem is of the first importance, but that tackling it would be bad for a young economist’s career. Levitt actually posted on his blog this denial that he was ruining economics. I think the important lesson of Scheiber’s article is that most economic problems are difficult because it is hard to tell what is causing what—that Levitt is good at finding good natural experiments, but that they are hard to find.