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I had a look at where behavioural economics fits into the JEL classification, for this question: Creating a list to measure the site's coverage of subfields

I see that experimental design fits under JEL-C (C91, C92, C93); principles of behavioural microeconomics fits under JEL-D (D03); and behavioural macroeconomics fits under JEL-E (E03).

At the moment, we have a tag. Behavioural macroeconomic questions would thus have that tag, and the tag.

We could tailor our tags to match the JEL ontology. Or we could let our tags evolve organically, and use tag-wikis and meta questions (such as the top link in the question) to cross-refer between the two ontologies. Or something else.

Any thoughts?

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  • $\begingroup$ I just realized I am not sure what is the most efficient way to create tags en masse. Any suggestions? There seems not to be an action "create tag". $\endgroup$
    – Alecos Papadopoulos
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 3:45
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    $\begingroup$ @AlecosPapadopoulos there isn't. Asking a question is the usual way to create a tag. If a tag is created, but then doesn't apply to any questions, it gets auto-deleted. I recommend against creating lots of tags that don't have questions. $\endgroup$
    – 410 gone
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 8:16
  • $\begingroup$ Ok, I though of another way, thanks. $\endgroup$
    – Alecos Papadopoulos
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 11:35

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I favour sticking with semantic tags as the primary means of organisation for tags. I think most academic economists might know the JEL code for their own field, but not for others. People other than practising academics are likely to find the JEL system even more baffling. Moreover, I am not convinced that JEL is exhaustive or that is deals well with borderline or crossover cases like that mentioned in the question. With these things in mind, I don't see the value in constraining ourselves to a metadata system that was designed for the world of print journal articles.

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I have not seen any answer actually pointing out the benefits of the JEL system. Unless these are specified, I'm against cluttering the tags with additional (but useless?) information.

So if you want to make a case for the JEL case, be explicit in how they are useful for us here.

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I half-disagree with Ubiquitous on this one. I mentioned in a comment to another meta-question, that we should use the primary JEL codes. I have started to think that we should go for the second-level, like this

Welfare-Economics-D6

-first the name and then the code, for search purposes.

No system is perfect, and as in research papers, askers will use more than one tag. The benefits of having in place a taxonomy used globally (and characterized by a certain degree of consistency) far outweigh the occasional problems.

Do we really think that letting people creating tags without guidance will result in something more useful? I am not saying "ban everything else", just "let's create them so that the askers find them, and see what happens".

Of course one could think "why not use just the nomenclature and leave the codes out?" I would answer "for search and educational purposes" but also, for the academic flavor.

How are we going to decide this? If decided, I am volunteering to create all the tags.

(cc @Ubiquitous)

ADDENDUM
Responding to questions in the comments by user @Foobar:

"Academic Flavor": the official motto of this site is "For professional and academic economists and analysts ". And we do want for this to hold. Using the JEL classification with the code, is a way to signal that this place is indeed for academics and professionals, in an immediate and unmistakable way. This shapes expectations, and affects the way newcomers will view the content here: it helps the chances that instead of, say, concluding "this is not truly a place for academics and professionals -goodbye" they will think "this is not yet a place for academics and professionals -let's contribute in making it one".

"Search benefits" This a) pertains to the use of the words that the JEL classification uses, and I don't see why we should not have them here, but also, to the codes themselves, since in my experience, academics and professionals search also using JEL codes to focus the search.

"Educational Purpose:" The taxonomy of every discipline is a core part of it, since it reflects the way it partitions the phenomena that it studies. And the JEL classification is globally used. Bringing the non-academic users here (and there will be many of them), and even the economics students, in contact with this taxonomy, name and code together, has an educational effectsince it helps them get familiar with the classification, and know that this is indeed the classifiataion used in the discipline.

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    $\begingroup$ I could be persuaded to go with a system like that you suggest in which the JEL code is appended to the name of the tag. But we will probably need to keep the additional tags not covered in the JEL classification. $\endgroup$
    – Ubiquitous
    Commented Dec 10, 2014 at 18:27
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    $\begingroup$ @Ubiquitous No objection. I will dive in soon. $\endgroup$
    – Alecos Papadopoulos
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 2:35
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I believe the compromise of allowing OP's the choice between JEL, semantic, or both is best, and that if Alecos is willing to create the tags, we have no reason to delete them or forbid their use.

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    $\begingroup$ I think we have reached a consensus here. I will create the tags as described in my answer here. $\endgroup$
    – Alecos Papadopoulos
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 2:36

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