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The academic side of economics pushes towards norms like Math and Physics (that's what gets you prestige). AKA you come up with something like the Black-Scholes model and you've got yourself a Nobel Prize [1].

Which is cool, but skips over the aspects of economics related to unpredictable bags of meat buying things that are more like psychology/sociology and other "soft" sciences [2]

On that note: one thing I didn't see mentioned in the article or the discussion here was prediction markets. Prediction markets are interesting as its a meeting point of the two sides. "Think your model is better? put $50 in and we'll see in a month". I really wish they were more widely used/officially accepted, but the stigma of "betting" has pretty well killed them.

1 - https://www.investopedia.com/university/options-pricing/blac... 2 - https://xkcd.com/1520/




Never mind that said Nobel is the ultimate insider price, given out by the Swedish national bank and set up long after Nobel was dead.


The Black-Scholes model may not be a good example; it is successfully applied by financiers on a day-to-day basis.




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