On Sat, 17 Nov 2001, Gerald_A_Levy wrote: > While not on the subject of 'Marxist econometrics', some listmembers > may find the links at the following site, called 'THE IMPOVERISHED > SOCIAL SCIENTIST'S GUIDE TO FREE STATISTICAL > SOFTWARE AND RESOURCES', useful: > > http://data.fas.harvard.edu/micah_altman/socsci.shtml Yes, this is interesting. Thanks. > "Doing econometrics is like trying to learn the laws of electricity > by playing the radio". > > The author is identified just as 'Orcutt'. That would be Guy Orcutt, pioneer of estimators designed to improve on Ordinary Least Squares in the presence of serially correlated errors. > It's certainly a catchy saying, isn't it? But, is it a valid > observation? What do you think? I'm not sure exactly what he had in mind, but I think I see the general idea. You're trying to discover "laws" but the data you're working with are not experimental: they are "high level" phenomena produced by a complex set of mechanisms, rather than the trace of one particular mechanism of interest, isolated via careful experimental design. Allin Cottrell.
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