ECONOMIC RESEARCH IN THE LAST 30 YEARS—-MORE DATA; LESS THEORY.

ECONOMIC RESEARCH IN THE LAST 30 YEARS—MORE DATA, LESS THEORY. Noah Smith and Justin Fox have articles on the Bloomberg site about a dramatic shift in the kinds of articles in economics that are published. (Smith’s article is here and Fox’s article is here.) Fox’s article shows that the percentage of articles based on economic theory in three leading economics journals was about 60% in 1983. That percentage was down to 28% in 2011. During the same period the percentage of articles based on data increased from about 35% in 1983 to about 64% in 2011 (I am eyeballing the bargraphs in the article). Fox attributes the shift to technological change—the introduction of the personal computer.