Lecture Economic theory and measurement: some thoughts and some examples Economics Lecture Add to calendar 2026-04-23 11:00 2026-04-23 12:15 Europe/Rome Economic theory and measurement: some thoughts and some examples Conference Room Villa La Fonte YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Apr 23 2026 11:00 - 12:15 CEST Conference Room, Villa La Fonte Organised by Department of Economics Orazio Attanasio, Yale University, will present his paper "Economic theory and measurement: some thoughts and some examples" Most empirical work in economics has considered only a narrow set of measures as meaningful and useful to characterize individual behavior, a restriction justified by the difficulties in collecting a wider set. However, this approach often forces the use of strong assumptions to estimate the parameters that inform individual behavior and identify causal links. We argue that a more flexible and broader approach to measurement could be extremely useful and allow the estimation of richer and more realistic models that rest on weaker identifying assumptions. We argue that the design of measurement tools should interact with, and depend on, the models economists use. Measurement is not a substitute for rigorous theory, it is an important complement to it, and should be developed in parallel to it. We illustrate these arguments with a model of parental behavior estimated on pilot data that combines conventional measures with novel ones. Register