The Value of Observation in Research
So something I read in the starting years of learning economics was Adam Smith’s paper explaining division of labour and it just stayed with me through life. The simple concepts of the invisible hand, free markets, and how one of his main pieces of research was just exploring the concept of division of labour through observation of the factory and its assembly line really spoke to me as a young learner. Today every time I look at anything related to research, I always go back to how simple that concept was, and how his eyes were a medium through which something so intriguing was conveyed to the world. I feel like much of economics today misses that kind of observation and the raw discussion that one had about new concepts. Maybe everyone has discovered everything in the world conceptually, and there is perhaps lesser scope for novel observation in economics, but I feel if we really try we could still find it in abundance. Like we say in economics, ceteris paribus, once you hold other ...
