Unlike most economists, I tend to use 'theory paper' in a pejorative sense, because too many theory papers:
- Make assumptions that cannot possibly be true and are not reasonable simplifications of the 'real world'.
- Are non-falsifiable, do not make predictions, or have so many free parameters they can be used to predict anything.
You need to know this math in order to be able to publish 'theory papers'. The larger question should be, "why does the economics profession put any value on this work?"
I was pretty sure what it meant but I looked up pejorative anyway.
I've only tried to write one theory paper and the referees said that there wasn't enough theory to publish without an empirical test (i.e., the calculus 1 level math wasn't obscure enough). I did the test and all was good.
