Since Professor Warren is much in the news lately, I thought it was time to reprise my post on her from almost four years ago. Also read the comments. Enjoy.
Elizabeth Warren on fact, law and theory
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August 1, 2010
[…] interpretations of empirical data related to credit cards by Elizabeth Warren (see also Ribstein and McArdle), the widely reported first-choice for the head of the agency (indeed, some describe […]
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July 23, 2010
[…] Larry’s post responding to an earlier blog post from Professor Warren relates not exactly to empirical skills, but empirical teaching and (do read the post) a view on law, theory and facts that reveals what I take to be a fairly deep misunderstanding of economic theory and methodology. David Evans and I make a similar point on the use and abuse of the behavioral economics literature to bolster the case for a consumer protection agency. Larry’s post also reminding me that as long as we are reprising old posts, I have one directly on topic that provides an example that I think gets at what McArdle, Zywicki and Ribstein are each discussing. Frankly, I also think it is a bit more interesting than both the tax and medical bankruptcy examples for the purposes of discussing the CFPB because I believe Warren’s actual data skills matter less than how she interprets data for legal and policy applications because she will have a large staff of competent economists to do data analysis. I do not suspect she will be running many regressions on her own. […]
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