Econometrics and Machine Learning

I find myself using linear regressions in all of my Econ papers. A
friend of mine suggested that I use machine learning algorithms like
MLP, Naive Bayes, KNN instead. What do you guys think? Is there a
reason that Econometricians use linear regressions so heavily for
modeling? My friend claims that using his algorithms will give me
better predictive accuracy. Is that true? Is that all I care about?

Thanks,

-Greg

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