IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v71y2005i3p556-565.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Theory versus Application: Does Complexity Crowd Out Evidence?

Author

Listed:
  • Philip R. P. Coelho
  • James E. McClure

Abstract

Donald F. Gordon hypothesized that mathematical complexity in economics is inversely related to operational ism. Here we (i) operationalize Gordon's hypothesis, (ii) test for the significance of trends in complexity for the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and (iii) test Gordon's hypothesis hy conducting analyses of the contents of articles from the American Economic Review (AER), as well as the contents of articles citing the AER articles. The results do not refute the hypothesis that complexity crowds out operationalism in economics. Additionally, the presence of significant, positive trends toward complexity suggests that the magnitude of the crowding out is on the rise in these journals.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip R. P. Coelho & James E. McClure, 2005. "Theory versus Application: Does Complexity Crowd Out Evidence?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(3), pages 556-565, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:71:y:2005:i:3:p:556-565
    DOI: 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2005.tb00658.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2005.tb00658.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2005.tb00658.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David N. Laband & Robert D. Tollison, 2000. "Intellectual Collaboration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 632-661, June.
    2. George J. Stigler, 1969. "Does Economics Have a Useful Past?," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 1(2), pages 217-230, Fall.
    3. Donald F. Gordon, 1955. "Operational Propositions in Economic Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63, pages 150-150.
    4. Sen, Amartya, 1995. "Rationality and Social Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 1-24, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Sutter & Rex Pjesky, 2007. "Where Would Adam Smith Publish Today? The Near Absence of Math-free Research in Top Journals," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 4(2), pages 230-240, May.
    2. Philip R. P. Coelho & Daniel B. Klein & James E. McClure, 2005. "Rejoinder to Pesendorfer," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 2(1), pages 32-41, April.
    3. Philip R. P. Coelho & Frederick De Worken-Eley III & James E. McClure, 2005. "Decline in Critical Commentary, 1963–2004," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 2(2), pages 355-361, August.
    4. Philip R. P. Coelho & James E. McClure, 2007. "The Market for Lemmas," Working Papers 200702, Ball State University, Department of Economics, revised Apr 2007.
    5. Philip R. P. Coelho & James E. McClure, 2008. "The Market for Lemmas: Evidence That Complex Models Rarely Operate in Our World," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 5(1), pages 78-90, January.
    6. Daniel B. Klein & Pedro Romero, 2007. "Model Building versus Theorizing: The Paucity of Theory in the _Journal of Economic Theory_," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 4(2), pages 241-271, May.
    7. Lee C. Spector & Courtenay C. Stone, 2010. "Suspicious Estimates of Ex Ante Real Interest Rates: Evidence of Macroeconomic Malpractice?," Working Papers 201010, Ball State University, Department of Economics, revised Oct 2010.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jacob Wood & Gohar Feroz Khan, 2015. "International trade negotiation analysis: network and semantic knowledge infrastructure," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(1), pages 537-556, October.
    2. Marian-Gabriel Hâncean & Matjaž Perc & Lazăr Vlăsceanu, 2014. "Fragmented Romanian Sociology: Growth and Structure of the Collaboration Network," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(11), pages 1-9, November.
    3. Katharina Rath & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2016. "Recent trends in co-authorship in economics: evidence from RePEc," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(12), pages 897-902, August.
    4. Wu-Hsiung Huang, 2014. "Singularity and Arrow’s paradox," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(3), pages 671-706, March.
    5. List, Christian & Polak, Ben, 2010. "Introduction to judgment aggregation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 441-466, March.
    6. Medoff, Marshall H., 2003. "Collaboration and the quality of economics research," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(5), pages 597-608, October.
    7. Waltman, Ludo, 2012. "An empirical analysis of the use of alphabetical authorship in scientific publishing," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 700-711.
    8. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta & Oscar Volij, 2004. "The Measurement of Intellectual Influence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(3), pages 963-977, May.
    9. Seongkyoon Jeong & Jae Young Choi, 2012. "The taxonomy of research collaboration in science and technology: evidence from mechanical research through probabilistic clustering analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(3), pages 719-735, June.
    10. Önder, Ali Sina & Schweitzer, Sascha & Yilmazkuday, Hakan, 2021. "Specialization, field distance, and quality in economists’ collaborations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    11. Dong‐dong Wang & Kangzhou Wang, 2022. "Evolutionary game analysis of low‐carbon effort decisions in the supply chain considering fairness concerns," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(5), pages 1224-1239, July.
    12. Matthias Weber, 2016. "The Effects of Listing Authors in Alphabetical Order: A survey of the Empirical Evidence," Bank of Lithuania Occasional Paper Series 12, Bank of Lithuania.
    13. Jo Royle & Louisa Coles & Dorothy Williams & Paul Evans, 2007. "Publishing in international journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 71(1), pages 59-86, April.
    14. Maksym Polyakov & Morteza Chalak & Md. Sayed Iftekhar & Ram Pandit & Sorada Tapsuwan & Fan Zhang & Chunbo Ma, 2018. "Authorship, Collaboration, Topics, and Research Gaps in Environmental and Resource Economics 1991–2015," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 71(1), pages 217-239, September.
    15. Walter Bossert & Kotaro Suzumura, 2011. "Multi-profile intergenerational social choice," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(3), pages 493-509, September.
    16. Rosenzweig, Stav & Grinstein, Amir & Ofek, Elie, 2016. "Social network utilization and the impact of academic research in marketing," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 818-839.
    17. Walter Bossert & Kotaro Suzumura, 2015. "Multi-Profile Intertemporal Social Choice: A Survey," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: Constanze Binder & Giulio Codognato & Miriam Teschl & Yongsheng Xu (ed.), Individual and Collective Choice and Social Welfare, edition 127, pages 109-126, Springer.
    18. Matthias Krapf, 2015. "Age and complementarity in scientific collaboration," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 751-781, September.
    19. Sanjeev Goyal & Marco J. van der Leij & José Luis Moraga-Gonzalez, 2006. "Economics: An Emerging Small World," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(2), pages 403-432, April.
    20. Keith Dowding, 2004. "Social Choice and the Grammar of Rights and Freedoms," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 52(1), pages 144-161, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:71:y:2005:i:3:p:556-565. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.