Truth be told, I think Popper would have approved of the identification effort. How could the person who advanced falsification not have approved of an attempt to address endogeneity and unobserved variables? But most people ignore an important aspect of Popper’s beliefs about scientific theories. He also thought that theories deserve special attention if they make unexpected predictions. Thus, falsification was very powerful if combined with creative derivation of hypotheses.
Now, identification is not in any way contrary to that view. Instrumental variables, or any other technique addressing identification, can be used to test unexpected hypotheses. However, real scientific practice is about trade offs. Should I spend my time on theory building or some other activities? My view of the identification craze isn’t that it’s wrong. My view is that it’s “end game.” In other words, identification is a luxury when you have an abundance of data and a pretty clear…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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