Bluematter.

Some macroeconomists use calibration, some use econometrics, and some use both. There’s no real methodological debate left in the field on this issue.

What is true is that most people outside of macro do not like calibration. I don’t know why. I spent seven years of my life thinking about whether econometrics was better than calibration … and pretty much decided that the answer is: “it depends”.

That's N. Kocherlakota, from his essay on the state of modern macro. He's absolutely right, and keep in mind that I am an econometrician.

Part of the reason is that macroeconometrics is, well, dodgy - and that's 'at best'. A lot of macroeconometrics is outright bonkers.

Another issue is that econometrics is generally misunderstood; most of the 'data' on any issue usually resides on the researcher's head, meaning that in most cases the informational contribution of hard-coded data is much less important that that of theory ('soft-coded data'?). There's no such thing as 'letting the data speak for itself', but the notion sounds appealing so people keep pretending there is.

And if you take issue with the previous sentence, good luck discovering the next Phillips curve, deciding whether GDP has a unit root, and estimating any elasticity with a non-laughable degree of precision.