The Great Depression drove economists from theory toward empirical data

Evidence

Speaking at the International Statistical Institute in 1936, Karl Pribram, Mises’s old acquaintance from Vienna who was now a leading figure at the International Labour Organization (ILO), tracked the descent of the economists from the clouds to the earth. Economists had begun with abstract notions of a “worldwide universal economic system” but had been forced by events to “work downward from lofty theorizing to the essential realities of economic life.” Wrangling with the prob­lem of the ­Great Depression deepened the marriage between statisticians and economists. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 248

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A German economist proposed grounding economics in empirical behavioral sciences rather than abstractions — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 328

Broader Connections

• A German economist proposed grounding economics in empirical behavioral sciences rather than abstractions #expands (0.78) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 328