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Other social scientists do not like when economists venture into their turf and challenge established methodology. We economists, of course, welcome these instances of Economics imperialism because we believe our methods are superior. But other scientists also venture into Economics, and the most brazen are the physicists. They created a new field, Econophysics, that has been met with bewilderment or amusement by economists, including myself (Exhibits A and B). Economics and Econophysics largely ignore each other. Here is now the paper that will be with upmost bewilderment in social sciences, Econophysics applied to religion.
Marcel Ausloos studies a religious sect, the Antoinists, over 80 years. Lacking information about membership, attention is turned towards income and expense reports. Ausloos tries to find patterns and regimes in the data in order to understand the growth and decay of the cult. While there is some discussion of GDP and demographics, the exercise is all about fitting the evolution of expenses with a mixture of geometric growth and a sine wave in three different regimes. Why is not clear. And I also do not think the data has been adjusted for inflation. A really bizarre study, I doubt scholars in religion will learn much from it, and economists certainly nothing except to view this field even more with suspicion.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
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7 comments:
Honest question: is all of econophysics that bad, or do you pick the worst ones?
The Econophysics ones are more chance encounters. But I have yet to see one that gave me a 'aha' moment.
I skimmed through it, and it is even worse than you describe it. Unfortunately, there is some entertainment value to it, it is so bad.
OMG, this paper is hilarious! And sad.
For a better paper on this sort of thing, see the one by Michael D. Makowsky published in JEBO, Sept. 2011, "Religion, clubs, and emergent social divides," 80m 74-87, although I realize that it is already published and in an Elsevier journal it is of no interest. I also note that it is more of an agent-based model than a strictly econophysics one, per se.
BTW, showing up given the ej rumor of your demise, EL. Glad you are not kaput yet, really, despite our sometimes heated differences.
Barkley, do not try to associate ABM with Econophysics. It is a disservice to ABM.
For some of my views on econophysics see my "Econophysics and Economic Complexity," Advances in Complex Systems, 2008, 11(5), 745-760, also available on my website, which discusses both pros and cons. If you dig around you can find a video of me presenting that paper at a conference on econophysics and sociophysics in Zurich, where I got into quite an argument with Didier Sornette. Herb Gintis was also a plenary speaker at that conference. It is my view that there are some good econophysics models and papers, as well as pretty awful dreck, with me being largely sympathetic with the critique in Physica A by Gallegati, Keen, Lux, and Ormerod.
I would think that someone here would not be saying nice things about ABM, given the usual attitude of EL and some of his fans that it is awful dreck, although this may be a matter of some dreck being awfuller than other dreck. As it is, while ABM and econophysics are in general distinct, there are overlaps and connections, with certain people doing models that are arguably both simultaneously. Some of these are among the more defensible econophysics stuff. As it is, Makowsky is at least friendly with the econophysics crowd, if not fully part of them.
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