Mathiness in the Theory of Economic Growth
Romer, Paul M.
American Economic Review 105, no. 5 (2015): 89-93
“Academic politics, like any politics, is better served by words that are evocative and ambiguous, but if an argument is transparently political, economists interested in science will simply ignore it. The style that I am calling mathiness lets academic politics masquerade as science. Like mathematical theory, mathiness uses a mixture of words and symbols, but instead of making tight links, it leaves ample room for slippage between statements in the languages of words as opposed to symbols, and between statements with theoretical as opposed to empirical content.”
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