[bertil]

It’s less a way to come off as “sciencey” and more a way to get your ideas accepted at this point. The people I know in the list of thanks would wholeheartedly agree with your the regression is forced but it gets neo-classic economists (when I was studying the vast majority and presumably still holding the reins of key publications) to not dismiss you as “psychologists”.

I’m not sure if the right approach is to use basic maths to illustrate the idea makes sense but doesn’t need that formalism to make it acceptable or to refuse the charade. I genuinely think the smarter people I know are also uncertain about it.

[toyg]

> it gets neo-classic economists [...] to not dismiss you as “psychologists”

Lol, that's funny - I'm pretty much at the point of dismissing "fundamentalist neoclassic economists"... As much as they try to deny it, economic studies are just social studies with a couple of simplistic graphs on top to look "mathy".

[jstanley]

As far as I'm concerned, economics is just supply and demand, and the efficient market hypothesis. Anything beyond that is some combination of politics, psychology, and social studies.