Two approaches to reasoning from evidence or what econometrics can learn from biomedical research

Julian Reiss

Journal of Economic Methodology, 2015, vol. 22, issue 3, 373-390

Abstract: This paper looks at an appeal to the authority of biomedical research that has recently been used by empirical economists to motivate and justify their methods. I argue that those who make this appeal mistake the nature of biomedical research. Randomised trials, which are said to have revolutionised biomedical research, are a central methodology, but according to only one paradigm. There is another paradigm at work in biomedical research, the inferentialist paradigm, in which randomised trials play no special role. I outline the inferentialist alternative in broad strokes, apply it to a recent controversy in econometrics and draw some general conclusions concerning econometric methodology.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2015.1071510

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