For people who might not be economists, let me give some background.
Paul Romer is a quite influential and famous economist who is one of the creators of modern "endogenous growth theory". Growth theory is about coming up with simple models of how we think economies grow over time. His theory suggests that economic growth occurs because of innovations that come from features inherent to the society that is growing, and each step of growth has a feedback that affects the next phase of growth. So for example, the amount of knowledge in an economy determines the level of growth, and growth dictates the level of knowledge in the next phase. This is against exogenous growth theory where growth is as a result of exogenous technological innovations that arrive randomly and shock the system. He's widely tipped to win the Nobel sometime soon for this and related ideas.
Now, Bob Lucas, another famous macroeconomist and growth theorist (and Nobel Winner) and his co-authors have been in Romer's crosshairs for some time because of what he calls the "mathiness" of their work. He defines mathiness as something that "uses a mixture of words and symbols, but instead of making tight links, it leaves ample room for slippage between statements in natural versus formal language and between statements with theoretical as opposed to empirical content." (http://paulromer.net/mathiness/)
In a relentless series of posts and papers, he's been asking questions at the root of whether macro-economics is a science, how it works and how it could be improved. Hackers might like his "Illustrating Mathiness – Code Analogy" (http://paulromer.net/illustrating-mathiness-code-analogy) where he compares poorly done economic models with bad code.
Paul Romer is a quite influential and famous economist who is one of the creators of modern "endogenous growth theory". Growth theory is about coming up with simple models of how we think economies grow over time. His theory suggests that economic growth occurs because of innovations that come from features inherent to the society that is growing, and each step of growth has a feedback that affects the next phase of growth. So for example, the amount of knowledge in an economy determines the level of growth, and growth dictates the level of knowledge in the next phase. This is against exogenous growth theory where growth is as a result of exogenous technological innovations that arrive randomly and shock the system. He's widely tipped to win the Nobel sometime soon for this and related ideas.
Now, Bob Lucas, another famous macroeconomist and growth theorist (and Nobel Winner) and his co-authors have been in Romer's crosshairs for some time because of what he calls the "mathiness" of their work. He defines mathiness as something that "uses a mixture of words and symbols, but instead of making tight links, it leaves ample room for slippage between statements in natural versus formal language and between statements with theoretical as opposed to empirical content." (http://paulromer.net/mathiness/)
In a relentless series of posts and papers, he's been asking questions at the root of whether macro-economics is a science, how it works and how it could be improved. Hackers might like his "Illustrating Mathiness – Code Analogy" (http://paulromer.net/illustrating-mathiness-code-analogy) where he compares poorly done economic models with bad code.
Here are some more of those posts:
Needs More Math <=> Needs More Cowbell http://paulromer.net/more-cowbell/
Why the Mathiness in Lucas (2009) Matters http://paulromer.net/mathiness-lucas-2009/
The Assumptions in Growth Theory http://paulromer.net/assumptions-of-growth-theory/