Continuando con el post anterior, surgía en los comentarios del post de Rizzo el papel de la econometría en estos trabajos empíricos. Sobre este tema dediqué un par de posts, viendo un poco la relación entre la econometría y la Escuela Austriaca: uno y dos. George Selgin tenía un comentario interesante que reproduzco:

Econometrics, properly employed (yes, much of it is sloppy crap), is more than a rhetorical alternative to prose: it is often an essential if imperfect means for saying something about magnitudes. Until Austrians generally acknowledge this–until they fully recognize the difference between establishing the logical validity of a theory and establishing its capacity to explain a change of some given magnitude, they won’t get many people to listen to them. Getting over the serious aversion to statistics that has long been part of the Austrian tradition is more important than embracing any fancy new theoretical or mathematical fads.

Sobre el uso de la econometría para ilustrar la teoría austriaca del ciclo económico veía un paper en Review of Austrian Economics: Illustrating the importance of Austrian business cycle theory: A reply to Murphy, Barnett, and Block; A call for quantitative study (quien quiera el .pdf que me lo pida en comentarios) de Andrew T. Young. Al parecer ha habido cierto debate sobre la cuestión entre los austriacos últimamente. Young hace una llamada al estudio cuantitativo. Copio el abstract:

Murphy et al. (2009) criticize Young’s (2005) test of Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) using US industry-level quarterly job reallocation data and the federal funds rate as a monetary policy indicator. I argue that not only are Murphy et al.’s specific criticisms misguided; more importantly, they all but completely rule out the type of empirical study that Young (2005) advocates: specifically, one that (1) is quantitative and distinguishes between statistical and economic significance and (2) attempts to exploit a hypothesis that is both a prediction of ABCT and not a prediction of competing monetary theories of the cycle. I argue that empirical studies embodying (1) and (2) are critical to ABCT as a research program. Furthermore, I review the existing econometric studies of ABCT from the last 10 years and conclude that there is much room for improvement along these lines.

Convendría recordar la opinión de Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, al que le enlacé algunos papers econométricos testando la teoría austriaca del ciclo, y me dijo (eso sí, en un tiempo record): “La verdad es que, desde el punto de vista meramente tecnico, son peores que las tesinas que me escriben los estudiantes de Penn en cuarto anio de la carrera de economia. Sinceramente, no son trabajos muy serios.” Normal entonces que como dice Young, haya mucho espacio para la mejora .

Pero vamos, no solo de econometría vive el hombre. (Aplicarla con rigor desde una perspectiva austriaca intuyo que debe de ser bastante difícil…) El Observatorio de Coyuntura Económica del Juan de Mariana (a.k.a. Rallo) ha dedicado extensos, profundos y detallados boletines a estudiar la crisis, con gran cantidad de datos, informaciones y fuentes (como el Flow of Funds de la Reserva Federal). Por otro lado, Robert Higgs, en su estudio de la ‘regime uncertainty’, tampoco testea ningún modelo econométrico para encontrar evidencias de su relevancia, pero sí tiene otros tipos de evidencias. Sobre esto, él mismo dice:

Of course, for mainstream macroeconomists, such evidence means nothing (se refiere a las opiniones/expectativas de unos cuantos empresarios). In fact, they hold it in complete contempt because (1) their formal mathematical models do not have a variable called “regime uncertainty,” and (2) even if they could be persuaded to take this factor into account, the canned data on which they rely — the product of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, for the most part — do not supply them with an “official” data set for their analysis. What you can’t measure, according to their “scientific” credo, does not exist. Their de facto motto (of which I have more than once been on the receiving end) is: you’ve got no formal model; you’ve got nothing.

Actualización: Me acabo de encontrar con un trabajo empírico donde se trata de ilustrar y contrastar la Teoría Austriaca a los ciclos económicos en Noruega: Austrian Economics: Application on Norwegian Business Cycles.

Quarterly time series data of base money supply, interest rates, investment and private consumption expenditure, employment, prices, and aggregate output are analysed in order to find relationships with assumptions of causality. Empirical evidence show that Austrian business cycle theory can help explain fluctuations in aggregate output for Norway.

Claro que la teoría austriaca del ciclo tiene una fundamentación micro que no sé si se recogerá bien en el trabajo, dados los datos macroagregados que se manejan, según el abstract.