[xiaoma]

We have the models, but economists have been surprisingly resistant to mainstream mathematical tools and often treat fields as scalars. A single consumer price index makes about as much sense as a single temperature measurement for an entire country.

IIRC prominent economists actively ridiculed the idea of a "Manhattan Project" a few years back. The idea was to pull in experts from mathematics, physics, biology and computer science to invigorate the field via cross-pollination like occurred with mathematics and physics in the 70s and economists did not like it.

Update: apparently it did lead to a conference, at least, and Nassim Taleb was one of the participants.