For this post, I get the opportunity to interview my professor that teach Intermediate Macroeconomics. I get to know more about communication style used by him and other economists. The first question that I asked him is about the common misconceptions in field of economics. He said that some researchers use a lot of mathematical definitions and proofs to explain the economic relationships that they are describing. Other researchers don't like to use as much formality, and prefer less rigorous descriptions of economic relationships.
A common mistake is to use one approach without the other. Often we can understand an economic relationship from a story or a graph, but using more rigorous mathematical or logical reasoning helps us to make sure that we don't make mistakes. Another mistake researchers make is to just look for statistical relationships in the data without trying to understand the economic theory behind the relationship.
Besides, he explained that he try to use a variety of methods of communicating and give a clear verbal description of whatever theory or model in class, which is usually the most difficult part. In some cases, there is a "real world" story or example of the theory, like when he talked to his students about Ford or Costco paying an efficiency wage. Real world examples are good because they help people to understand the theory or model, and because they show people that the theory or model is actually relevant, because they show that the theory or model accurately describes the real world.
Finally, if there is a good graph or simple mathematical example that demonstrates the model, he like to either project that on the screen or work through it on the blackboard. Working through on the blackboard or document camera is preferable, because then students can see the process or the steps that he take in working through the logic of the model.
Other than that, he stated that in daily life he usually talking to one person or a small group of people. Basically he know those people, know what they know, and can tell from their facial expressions and from their responses to what he say whether they understand him or not. In a classroom, it is much more difficult to see whether the audience understands what he says. He also don't know what background knowledge students have.
In economics, theories that they learn in one course build on theories that they have learned in previous courses. If he assumed that students already understand some background material when he described current material and students don't have the background that he assumed, then they will get lost. So, he need to be more explicit about what he assumed when explaining a concept and need to be more careful in ensuring that students understand to what he said.
In economics, they work with a lot of formal mathematical models. Either they try to prove that some result follows from the assumptions of these models, or they try to use data to estimate the relationships between the variables in these models. In his research, he generally using data from a specific setting, like data on taxes and borrowing by cities and other local governments. So he try to also give a good description of the laws and institutions in that setting before he begin.
Then, he will describe the relationships between variables that economic theory predicts will hold, the model that he used to measure those relationships. Finally, he describe the statistical results that he find. In writing he need to be careful to describe exactly what statistical or mathematical results that have discovered, and show the audience that the results are interesting and important, without exaggerating those results.
In writing academic papers, he usually try to be clear and concise in what to say, rather than use a lot of clever or entertaining phrases. There are a lot of very skilled researchers who do not have great writing or speaking skills. Thus, it can be a big advantage to have good communication skills. Also, it is useful, even in formal academic papers and presentations, to use stories or simple examples to demonstrate the basic idea of a theory or model. Hence, I hope that this explanation can give you more information about how the communications style used by economists.
Thank you.
By: Syarah Alya
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