Assessing Economics as a Serviceable Social Science - ESSK Symposium

Description

Lecture Title: Non-epistemic values in causal inference for policy making.

I argue that the “credibility revolution” in causal inference is not as credible to support policy prescriptions as it is believed, because its methods involve contingent presuppositions which have been selected for non-epistemic reasons, and which limit/shape/determine the kind of empirical causal results that are offered to guide policy. I claim that such presuppositions and the inferential limitations to which they lead should be acknowledged and accounted for (just as much as their merits are). Failing to recognize these embedded contingent and limiting presuppositions leads to overconfidence about the “credibility” of the causal methods and their results, which in turn could lead to policy misapplications, to the imposition of certain policies over others based on non-epistemic reasons, and to the dismissal of relevant policy concerns just because they are not interpreted or characterized in accordance with the dominant causal framework.

Period	22 Aug 2025 → 23 Aug 2025
Event type	Conference
Location	Helsinki, FinlandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International