Comment by selectionbias

I admit I haven't read or even heard of Kate Raeworth, but I am an academic economist. Most modern economic research is empirical, a paper poses a policy-relevant empirical question 'did policy X reduce unemployment' and then empirical evidence is presented (perhaps using data from a randomly controlled trial or using quasi-experimental variation). The statistics are calculated and the assumptions required for the validity of the statistical analysis discussed critically and at great length. Undergraduate econ classes unfortunately leave students with the impression that academic econ is mostly unrealistic theoretical models of behavior, but those models are just handy tools for hypothesis formation, and it is the empirical testing of hypotheses that makes a discipline a science, not the manner by which those hypotheses were formed.