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A brief thread on the power of counting featuring my work with John Parman and @drlisadcook
Black names have a history. A deep history that is totally at odds with the conventional wisdom that black names are a function of 1960s social movements among blacks.
With @drlisadcook and John Parman we uncovered a list of black names that were (1) used commonly among blacks and (2) used very infrequently by whites.
We published the list of names in our paper in Explorations in Economic History https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014498314000059">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a...
I must say that @drlisadcook is terrific is using COUNTING as a primary methodology. This is one of the best projects I’ve been involved with because we established a new fact using a simple method — counting.
While everyone else in Econ searches for causal estimates we are losing out on the ability to make fundamental contributions to our body of knowledge using more transparent methods.
Our tasks as social scientists extends beyond causal estimates. We are charged with finding the truths of our social world. We cannot forget this fundamental mission.
