The path is determined not by the end, but by the beginning

The dialogue of economists, Ruben Enikolopova (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Rash) and Konstantin Sonin (University of Chicago, NRU HSE), about what is happening in economic science and about everything else. The blog retsilizes on the Facebook page Ratioeconomica , on Twitter and on a telegram .

KS: An increase in computer capacities allowed economists not only to work with large databases, but to organize such projects, about which when the data was processed manually, it was difficult to dream. The article “Lifetime Incomes in the United States Over Six Decades”, Greg Kaplan and co -authors for the first time calculate the changes in the income of the Americans throughout their lives - from those who began to work in 1957 to those who began in 1983 (they are now close to completion). And then everyone knows that for forty years in America, mediate income has been stagnation and inequality is growing, but I want to know more. In a nutshell, a growing inequality in the youth labor market plays an important role. That is, this is no longer in the article, but such and such a conclusion can be drawn yourself-in a complicated and accelerating world, education plays an increasingly important role.

Re: It is interesting that the new opportunities for the processing of huge data arrays not only allow you to answer questions that could only only think about, but also change the organization of production in economic science. If earlier empirical articles could be written almost alone, then working with huge amounts of data makes us switch to a “laboratory” method of production with a clearer division of labor and involving a large amount of “labor”. Such a laboratory has, for example, one of the pioneers of processing giant arrays of the administrative data of Raj Cheti from Stanford. The implementation of one of the most ambitious empirical projects for the study of inequality, Equality of Opportunity, demanded the joint work of a large team, from students and specialists in data visualization. And it was the possibility of maintaining the full work of such a laboratory that made it possible to lure Raj from his Alma Mater at Harvard to Stanford.

So the empirical economy even in organizing labor becomes closer to the natural sciences. Another question is that out of habit, laboratory staff are still mentioned in the list of thanks, and not in the list of co -authors.