Why LLMs are so good at economics

I can think of a few reasons:

At least for the time being, even very good LLMs cannot be counted on for originality.  And at least for the time being, good economic reasoning does not require originality, quite the contrary.

Good chains of reasoning in economics are not too long and complicated.  If they run on for very long, there is probably something wrong with the argument.  The length of these effective reasoning chains is well within the abilities of the top LLMs today.

Plenty of good economics requires a synthesis of theoretical and empirical considerations.  LLMs are especially good at synthesis.

In economic arguments and explanations, there are very often multiple factors.  LLMs are very good at listing multiple factors, sometimes they are “too good” at it, “aargh! not another list, bitte…”

Economics journal articles are fairly high in quality and they are generally consistent with each other, being based on some common ideas such as demand curves, opportunity costs, gains from trade, and so on.  Odds are that a good LLM has been trained “on the right stuff.”

A lot of core economics ideas are “hard to see from scratch,” but “easy to grasp once you see them.”  This too plays to the strength of the models as strong digesters of content.

And so quality LLMs will be better at economics than many other fields of investigation.