Economist Novosad: top econ journals meet high evidence standards, but tacit knowledge isn't written down
paulnovosad · x · 2026-10-10
Development economist Paul Novosad reflects on economics' verifiability gap with math. He clarifies this isn't nihilism: economics has plenty of informative papers, and modern top-journal work mostly meets a high standard of evidence.
The catch: knowledge of what is and isn't correct is largely not written down, and perhaps not even well understood by many practitioners. Responding to the math comparison, he argues there's a structural difference—math is hard-verifiable, while what passes for evidence in economics is highly culturally determined. Betting against future models is a bad idea, but this structural difference may shape AI substitutability across disciplines.
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