[colinmhayes]

So you're going with the only difference being who's building the model. Interesting take, can't say I disagree much. Although I would say that regularization in econometric models is a bit rare because it distorts the coefficients which as you pointed out is the primary goal of econometrics.

[mr_toad]

Econometric models tend to be hand-fit and focus more on explanation/hypothesis testing than prediction, so automated variable selection is less common (and sometimes frowned upon).