Sorry Professor Mankiw, but economics is not really a science. Economics is politics and normative value judgements all the way down, and you yourself end up admitting as much in your most recent essay in the Sunday Times. So why do you insist on calling economists “scientists”? Just because your colleagues and you continue to repeat the same form of wishful thinking over and over again doesn’t make it true. Please …
Is it not more of a science than an art?
“it depends” … on what? On whether one’s economic analysis is subject to falsification. But I will concede that there is a wide range between “science” on one end of the continuum and “art” on the other. Economic analysis that can be tested and potentially falsified would fall a lot closer to the “science” end than to the “art” end of the spectrum, but at the same time, policy masquerading as “scientific economics” in reality falls closer to the “art” end …