Still the most potent empirical research method in the social sciences is "trivial self-observation", even if it will not get your article published in AER.
It might still save you serious time and effort spent on econometric exercises that go nowhere (or worse: are flogged into publishable shape even though they went nowhere).
Browsing the list of Econ Nobelists, I'd say about 25% were awarded for observations too blatantly obvious for the recipients' peers to pick up. A pretty good ROI in my book...
So a little exercise for next week: when you go grocery shopping, pay attention to how you and the grocery store deal with the possession-vs-property problem in the asynchronicity of exchange. "Wot?!", you ask.
It's the trivial observation that it's almost never convenient or even possible to hand over wares and money at the exact same time. Even if you've never noticed, your grocery store operator is keenly aware of it. Shrinkage is a major problem.
So if you take an item into your possession (into your shopping cart or basket, hopefully not your coat pocket) the store will try to make sure that they're not fully into your possession until you've paid for them. There are indeed degrees of possession...
So if by next Sunday you had a good look at whether your store uses turnstyles, RFID tags, roll-off belts or self-checkout stations to protect the property that is temporarily in your possession, congrats! You already know more than Mas-Colell, Whinston & Green!
The standard microeconomic textbook doesn't care. Even standard economic property rights theory mostly assumes that ownership means control. With a few exceptions, this asynchronicity doesn't seem a concern to most economists.
But it is indeed a huge economic problem. Logistics has exceedingly complicated rules to establish ownership, control, and responsibility while goods are in transit. Accounting is all about squaring possession against property.
And most importantly, these are *market* transactions. So it doesn't suffice to argue that accounting and logistics are fields within business administration, not economics.
