Why Should I Believe Your Applied Economics?

In an era of rising skepticism about science, this article explores what agricultural and applied economists can do to advance knowledge. If knowledge is what is believed by the preponderance of a community, then the key to advancing knowledge is to build substantive arguments—ones that are persuasive. To evaluate the substantiveness of an argument, this article develops a framework based on validity, topic, and audience. Applying that framework to two highly-cited articles, this article concludes that validity is a necessary condition for a substantive argument, but relevance (of topic to audience) is the sufficient condition. Applied economists are well-positioned to build compelling, objective arguments by fitting appropriate theory and methods to relevant, important topics.