Over the past several years, I have had conversations with some of the current and past North American members of the Econometric Society Coucil as well as with their colleagues concerning computational methods in economics. Below are the accounts of some of these conversations. In each account, “X” refers to some member of the council, but X may be different across examples. “Z” refers to others.
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Any idiot can handle computational papers
During a discussion of Elsevier journals, X was very critical of a journal where one of the main editors had not published anything in the field for many years. I pointed out that when people submit papers to Econometrica, they are evaluated by editors who have never published anything on computation. X said “That is fine because of the quality of the Editors of Econometrica.”
This is typical of the insulting attitude in economics towards computation. We all agree that a game theory paper should be handled by a game theorist who is on top of current research, and an econometrics paper should be handled by someone who is informed about current research in econometrics, etc. However, Econometrica takes a quite different view when it comes to computational work. How are we supposed to interpret such a comment? Several people have made it clear that this attitude is shared by Econometrica and the Society. Do they think that computational work is so trivial that someone who has never worked in the area and does not participate in the current literature is able to treat that work in a serious manner? Or do they think that the people who do computational work have such weak intellects that there is no problem for any Econometrica Editor to judge their work? The exact explanation does not matter since the message is crystal clear: “Econometrics and game theory are serious fields and authors of papers in those fields deserve to have their submissions evaluated by individuals who are actively working in those fields. Computational economics is not a serious field.”
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Our students are starving – but no one cares
Ken to Z:
I was struck by … comments in your letter … You said that “[Our] students really starve for great courses in computation”; I am happy to hear of their interest. You then said “please help them”. That comment has stuck with me since I read it …
I know that you are sincere in your support for training in computational economics ……. However, … you are .. a tenured professor. … You … have a vote and a voice on what happens at [your department]. Because of its resources and reputation, [your department] could hire the best computational economists in the world; as far as I know [your department] has made no such effort.
Excuse my bluntness, but I hope you take this as a challenge: If you aren’t going to help [your] students, then why should I?
………………..
Reply from Z:
… one person can not decide for the entire department or set the priorities in hiring. But I am doing my best to influence the priorities of the department. I think though I have little or no voice in the department.
……………….
Z is not on the ES council. However he has colleague(s) that are, who apparently do not share his support for training grad students in computational methods.
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Nobody reads the introduction
The lead article of the silver anniversary volume of Econometrica began with an inaccurate description of the math programming literature, ignoring methods developed over 30 years ago. Trying to defend this paper, X said, “It really did no harm since no one reads introductions.” I agree that experts in a field likely don’t read introductions, but is that the only audience? My reply was “I bet many graduate students read introductions.” I guess the lesson here is that readers should not trust introductory material in Econometrica articles.
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Don’t need people like that here
Many years ago, I tried to help a student get an interview with a specific department. When I inquired as to why he did not get an interview at the meetings, X told me that the student’s job market paper was assigned to someone to read but that when the reader saw that the paper used computation, the application was tossed because “We don’t need that here.” X particularly emphasized that there was already a person on the university staff (but not affiliated with the economics department) who does computational work.
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“Soon economists will be so far behind applied math that they won’t be able to catch up”
X told me that an applied math colleague of his, well-acquainted with economics, made this observation. I wholeheartedly agree with this and am working to close the gap.
Message to X: What are you doing?
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Material I would like to see in his department’s recruiting video
Judd to grad student at a seminar: [Various questions about his optimization methods]
Grad student at seminar: [Responses are inconsistent with basic optimization theory, including his first-year micro course.]
Judd in a followup e-mail: The theoretical analysis of your constrained optimization problem is wrong, implicitly making assumptions that don’t necessarily hold at the solution. Furthermore, the theoretical facts means that the software you chose to use is likely not able to solve your problem.
Grad student in e-mail reply: I .. hope that my responses [to your seminar questions] might be interpreted as reflecting the training I’ve gotten from my advisors and my own study.
I agree; this student’s lack of computational expertise does reflect on the training in his department. He has my sympathy, but perhaps he should tell the ES Council member(s) and other professors in his department about this. Complaining to me about their failings won’t do any good.
ECONOMETRICA’S MESSAGE TO COMPUTATIONAL ECONOMISTS: THERE IS NO ECONOMIST WITH NUMERICAL EXPERTISE THAT “MEETS ECONOMETRICA’S REQUIREMENTS TO BE AN ASSOCIATE EDITOR”