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To Kill a Black Swan: The Credibility Revolution at CEDE, 2000–2018

Juan Pablo Castilla ^* (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)

Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including a Symposium on the Work of William J. Baumol: Heterodox Inspirations and Neoclassical Models

ISBN: 978-1-80382-708-7, eISBN: 978-1-80382-707-0

Publication date: 8 September 2022

Abstract

The growing displacement of theory and other forms of wide-ranging knowledge of social phenomena by empirical research methods in economics is widely noted by economists and historians of economic knowledge. Less attention has been devoted, however, to understand the materialization of such changes in the scientific practices. This article studies the recent transformations in the epistemological practices at CEDE, a research center in Colombia. I use a machine learning technique called Topic Modeling, interviews to CEDE researchers, and exegesis of papers to characterize a shift in the production of knowledge in microeconometrics at CEDE during the years 2000 and 2018. I explain this shift by characterizing two sets of epistemological practices that implies a recent tendency to disdain research that cannot make a “strong” causal inference.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Andrés Felipe Sierra and Erich Pinzón-Fuchs for their unconditional support and devoted guidance; Alfredo Eleazar for his valuable aid in programming; John Davis, Andrés Guiot, Jimena Hurtado, Paula Jaramillo, Mathew Panhans, and Juan Camilo Yamin for their keen insights and comments; and Sergio Mutis for his help with the visual design of the TM results.

Citation

Castilla, J.P. (2022), "To Kill a Black Swan: The Credibility Revolution at CEDE, 2000–2018", Fiorito, L., Scheall, S. and Suprinyak, C.E. (Ed.) Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including a Symposium on the Work of William J. Baumol: Heterodox Inspirations and Neoclassical Models (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 40B), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 153-192. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542022000040B012

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited