The Empirical Economist’s Toolkit
追溯了准实验方法在应用微观经济学中的兴起，通过文献计量和案例研究，揭示其起源、内容及与考尔斯框架的关联，并探讨了1980年代计量经济学危机等历史背景。
While historians of economics have noted the transition toward empirical work in economics since the 1970s, less understood is the shift toward “quasi-experimental” methods in applied microeconomics. Joshua D. Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke trumpet the wide application of these methods as a “credibility revolution” in econometrics that has finally provided persuasive answers to a diverse set of questions. Particularly influential in the applied areas of labor, education, public, and health economics, the methods shape the knowledge produced by economists and the expertise they possess. First documenting their growth bibliometrically, this article aims to illuminate the origins, content, and contexts of quasi-experimental research designs, which seek natural experiments to justify causal inference. To highlight lines of continuity and discontinuity in the transition, the quasi-experimental program is situated in the historical context of the Cowles econometric framework, and a case study from the economics of education is used to contrast the practical implementation of the approaches. Finally, significant historical contexts of the paradigm shift are explored, including the marketability of quasi-experimental methods and the 1980s crisis in econometrics.