Social Science in the Making: An Economist's View

Recent developments in economics and psychology suggest that productivity in the social sciences will benefit from crossing existing academic barriers, and that such crossing is more and more likely. Social science is in the making, but its success seems particularly conditioned on the willingness to put experimentation and formalization on an equal footing. Economists will have to be satisfied with theoretical highways instead of malfunctioning superhighways, while social psychologists will have to adventure more fast-track formal theory building. Institutional changes would facilitate the integration.