Monday 2 April 2018

What can be explained by economics and what cannot be explained? 4

I have talked many things that can be explained by economics and today I want to talk about the things that cannot be explained by economics. Here I need to say these things may not be able to explained by myself only or just cannot be explained yet.

In general, every phenomena can only be partially explained by economics. For example, when we face perfect substitution, such as Pepsi and Coca Cola, many of us still have some preferences; and economics cannot explain why some people prefer one over the other. In general, we can summarise some problems as probability problems, just like we suggest there is a probability for someone to prefer Pepsi over Coca Cola. Economics cannot fully explain people's tastes, then many economists suggest it is just an issue of probabilities, this conclusion might not be rigorous enough.

In addition, there are other probability explanations that seem not very rigorous. For example, in finance, we usually give a probability for a state to happen, then based on these states' probabilities, we calculate expected outcomes. Furthermore, we tend to assume an event has a particular probability distribution. However, can we really make these probability assumptions? This is just like flipping a coin. If we know the force and other key factors, we may be able to predict the outcome of flipping a coin.

Therefore, in economics, it is possible that the concepts of randomness and probabilities and uncertainty are used too often without much deep thinking. 

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