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Economics is not statistics (and vice versa)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2020

Peter T. Leeson
Peter T. Leeson*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Economic analysis is a theoretical approach, not an empirical one. It is a way of thinking, not a way of testing. An analysis that has an empirical component can be economic without being quantitative: economics is not statistics. An atheoretical analysis can never be economic, no matter how impressive its regressions: statistics is not economics.

Keywords

Economic analysisqualitative methodsquantitative methods
Type
Comment
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , August 2020 , pp. 423 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2020

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