A long-standing academic divide now separates two presidential candidates. For nearly three decades, legal scholarship has been dominated a deductive, theoretical approach that analyzes incentives and assumes outcomes, with the rational actor playing the starring role. The newer empirical approach is far more inductive, and data are often deployed to show that the rational actor is nowhere to be found.
In this morning’s New York Times, David Leonhardt explains the key differences between presidential candidates Clinton and Obama using exactly this construct (although not these terms).