Causal Claims in Economics
2025/01/12 by Prashant Garg, Thiemo Fetzer, Garg, Prashant +1 · 6 voices
#econ.GN #cs.CL #cs.IR #cs.SI #stat.ME
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2501.06873
Abstract
As economics scales, a key bottleneck is representing what papers claim in a comparable, aggregable form. We introduce evidence-annotated claim graphs that map each paper into a directed network of standardized economic concepts (nodes) and stated relationships (edges), with each edge labeled by evidentiary basis, including whether it is supported by causal inference designs or by non-causal evidence. Using a structured multi-stage AI workflow, we construct claim graphs for 44,852 economics papers from 1980-2023. The share of causal edges rises from 7.7% in 1990 to 31.7% in 2020. Measures of causal narrative structure and causal novelty are positively associated with top-five publication and long-run citations, whereas non-causal counterparts are weakly related or negative.
Discussions
- The rise and fall of instrumental variables and twoway fixed effects. From: arxiv.org/abs/2501.06873 [bsky, 62 points, 4 comments]
- What’s next? - We’re preparing to release an open dataset of these structured claims soon—stay tuned! - Full paper at arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2501.068... - More interactive features at www.causal.claims [bsky, 5 points, 0 comments]
- Paper by @prashantgarg.bsky.social analyzing causal claims in economics from 44,000 NBER and CEPR working papers: arxiv.org/abs/2501.06873 [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]
- Interesting study of causal claims in economics. *Causal claims have increased in recent years. *Papers with complex casual claims more likely to be published in top journals & have more cites *Papers [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
- I should clarify, this isn't my data, and is just for NBER/CEPR working papers. I'd guess they use working papers because they're publicly available for bulk download, it might be harder to do for spe [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
- マクロ経済学の凋落、ミクロ経済学の隆盛 arxiv.org/pdf/2501.06873 LLMをつかった経済学研究増えているのかー [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
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