Words have meanings, part XXVI

In the midst of an otherwise-excellent article summarizing what appears to be quite nice research on the degree to which auto repair shops correctly diagnose problems and prescribe unnecessary services, David Leonhardt inserts a rather curious claim: that this research somehow exemplifies "freakonomics," against which there has been a (possibly justified) backlash, but does so in a good way. In doing so he links to an older NYTimes piece that seems just atrocious, one that runs together a number of totally different trends:

(1) economists studying non-market interactions (Beckerites, public choice folks, etc.)
(2) economists distancing themselves from political advocacy, seeing themselves as impartial scientists
(3) economists turning to statistics (or empirical work more broadly) as opposed to formal modeling
(4) economists turning to micro- as opposed to macro- level questions
(5) economists studying "the everyday"

Whatever categories you think Steve Levitt's work falls into, it's just insane to claim that these 5 things are somehow identical. Nor do they necessarily go together. Examples are easy enough to come by--David Friedman's "Hidden Order" is clearly 5, 1, and 4, but certainly not 2 or even 3.

Schneider's research is at the heart of economics: the study of market interactions. It's probably true to say that it's in some sense Not What Most Economists Do, but let's be a bit more precise about what we're talking about. He's studying "the everyday," but the everyday of the market, and while it's micro and empirical it doesn't at all sound like one of those "this instrumental variable regression will explain once and for all a complicated multicausal phenomenon that other social sciences, whose work I shall not read, let alone cite, have studied for decades" findings. Can we please reserve the term "Freakonomics" for the book and the blog? No? Sigh.