Economic Methodology

A través d’una recerca etimològica i filosòfica del terme "economia", el present treball mostra com el seu sentit original es referia a la destresa en la correcta disposició i administració dels recursos escassos. Aquesta concepció original del terme mostra que l’economia presenta dues dimensions diferenciades: una dimensió objectiva i una altra de subjectiva o espiritual. A través d’aquesta dualitat, el treball posa de manifest com la ciència econòmica actual resta centrada majoritàriament en l’anàlisi d’aquesta dimensió objectiva i que, en canvi, simplifica i d’alguna manera obvia la dimensió espiritual mitjançant supòsits reduccionistes com la racionalitat dels agents econòmics o el dels mercats eficients. En aquest sentit, el present treball aprofundeix en aquesta dimensió espiritual “oblidada” a través del pensament de John Maynard Keynes, i més concretament, a través d’una recerca al voltant de dues nocions keynesianes: els animal spirits i els states of mind.

In 1964, Buchanan wrote an article in which he criticized the definition of economics given by Robbins in his Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science. This article is remarkable because it represents Buchanan's attempts to redefine economics, that is, not only to propose his own definition but also to attack the standard, Robbins, definition of the discipline. More precisely, Buchanan thus offers a catallactic criticism of Robbins' definition. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss Buchanan's criticism and to show how he organizes the presentation of his own definition.

This paper is an attempt to systematize the methodological insights and contributions of the Austrian School of Economics and present them in their most up-to-date elaboration, thereby building on the earlier literature on the subject. It aims to improve on the publications listed above in two aspects. First, it takes into account the most recent conceptual developments that address some of the common misunderstandings of the Austrian methodological position, as well as some of its more insightful contemporary criticisms. Second, it organizes the presentation of the relevant material around several clearly specified methodological dimensions, while, in contrast to most of the abovementioned literature, keeping the description of the historical background behind the development of the Austrian method to an absolute minimum, as well as leaving out the non-methodological differences between the ASE and its intellectual rivals, thus aiming to make the presentation in question maximally focused and thematically unified.

This paper assesses James M. Buchanan's claim of following a positive approach in stark contrast to the normative approach to public finance of Richard A. Musgrave. The goal of this paper is to shed light on the foundations of modern American public finance by analysing one aspect of the methodology of its two most prominent fathers. I show (1) that it is difficult to distinguish Musgrave's and Buchanan's theories of public goods along the positive/normative dividing line and (2) that Buchanan's theory can also be considered normative. In the first three parts, I follow the Weberian methodological tradition in looking for value judgements in the theories, and by reflecting on the nature of ideal types. In the last part, I propose a broader interpretation of Buchanan's methodological stance within the academic context of the 1960s.

In this paper, I will briefly defend two claims that, I believe, put the “experimental turn” in economics into the broader historical and philosophical perspective. First, I argue that the adoption of experimental method should be seen as part of the general tendency of recent economics to become more empirical. It helped decisively to recognize the context-dependence of economic agency and economic rationality. This tendency invites us to rethink current economics in view of the famous Methodenstreit and to ask anew how it can be not just a social, but a cultural and an historical science. Thus, apart from marking a turn in the intellectual history of economics, experiments demonstrate the ways economics itself may turn (in)to history.
Second, and related issue, concerns the relevance of experimental economics for policy. Here, I suggest that it is instructive to look at the current debates in view of a classical agency-structure dualism familiar from social theory. It is this dualism—implying both tension between and attempts to reconcile agency and structure— that is invoked when discussing policy prospects of experimental (and behavioral) research. In particular, what exactly should be changed as a result of a given policy (be it in view of promoting the welfare or increasing efficiency, or similar concerns economists address)? Answering this question by referring to the interplay between agency and structure may additionally illuminate important methodological aspects of experimental economic research.

This textbook of Economic Policy is made of four parts:
1. Methodological questions;
2. Welfare Economics;
3. Economic models in a closed economy
4. Economic Policy in an open economy.

La Politica Economica è la disciplina che studia il processo decisionale delle istituzioni economiche e finanziarie interne di un paese, come il mercato, lo Stato, la banca centrale, e i comportamenti aggregati degli operatori economici, come le famiglie e le imprese, con riferimento agli effetti delle politiche micro e macroeconomiche destinate a modificare l'andamento del sistema economico per raggiungere obiettivi prestabiliti.
Il corso di Politica Economica, previsto negli ordinamenti didattici delle lauree di primo livello in Economia, Scienze Politiche, Giurisprudenza, Statistica, Ingegneria, risponde all'obiettivo di dotare di una preparazione professionale, oltre che culturale, soggetti destinati a svolgere studi specialistici di economia, compiti di carattere direttivo o ad assumere posizioni di elevata responsabilità nelle istituzioni e nelle amministrazioni pubbliche e private, come pure in organismi imprenditoriali e associativi operanti in settori che implicano relazioni con organismi pubblici o richiedono competenze riguardanti atti e costi della regolamentazione.
Le lezioni contenute in questo volume indicano i filoni principali del pensiero teorico che ha seguito i successi e gli insuccessi dell’azione dei mercati e dei poteri pubblici sui sistemi economici. Il piano dell’esposizione è articolato in tre parti. Alle questioni metodologiche principali della ricerca economica e delle relazioni della politica economica con le altre discipline, segue, nella prima parte, la trattazione dell’economia del benessere, ovvero l'analisi di tipo normativo delle regole che orientano il sistema economico al suo miglioramento. La seconda parte è dedicata ai modelli principali con cui il pensiero economico ha affrontato i problemi posti dal perseguimento degli obiettivi macroeconomici in economia chiusa. La terza parte tratta gli stessi temi, ma nel contesto di un’economia aperta alla internazionalizzazione dei mercati in presenza dei vincoli posti dalla loro progressiva globalizzazione.

Indice generale

Premessa
Indice dei grafici
Indice delle tabelle
Acronimi
Piano delle lezioni

Lezione 1-Introduzione

Questioni di metodo

Lezione 2-I limiti dello studioso e la varianza comportamentale
Lezione 3- Errore e non prescrittività delle proposizioni di politica economica
Lezione 4-Analisi economica e principi di politica

Parte prima: l’economia del benessere

Lezione 5-Paradigmi e modelli di politica economica
Lezione 6-Le preferenze sociali
Lezione 7-Miglioramento e ottimo paretiani
Lezione 8-I limiti dell’economia del benessere paretiana e i tentativi di superarli
Lezione 9-La teoria delle votazioni
Lezione 10-Funzioni del benessere, ottimo sociale e teorie della giustizia
Lezione 11-Il mercato e lo Stato
Lezione 12-I due teoremi fondamentali dell’economia del benessere e quello del second best
Lezione 13-I limiti del mercato per gli obiettivi microeconomici
Lezione 14-Il teorema di Coase e le sue critiche
Lezione 15-I limiti del mercato per gli obiettivi macroeconomici

Parte seconda: i modelli di economia chiusa

Lezione 16-La neutralità della moneta
Lezione 17- La Grande Crisi e l’economia di Keynes
Lezione 18- La sintesi neoclassica
Lezione 19- La Nuova Macroeconomia Classica
Lezione 20- Le rifondazioni keynesiana e neoclassica e le relazioni tra disoccupazione e inflazione
Lezione 21- La programmazione economica
Lezione 22- I limiti dell’intervento pubblico
Lezione 23- Le politiche micro: obiettivi e strumenti
Lezione 24- Le politiche micro: alcune applicazioni
Lezione 25- L’analisi costi benefici: aspetti teprici
Lezione 26- L’analisi costi benefici: le fasi procedurali
Lezione 27-La moneta e l’economia monetaria
Lezione 28-La politica monetaria: obbiettivi e strumenti   
Lezione 29-La politica di bilancio: aspetti storici e teorici
Lezione 30-Le politiche del debito pubblico
Lezione 31-La politica dei redditi

Parte terza: la politica economica in economia aperta

Lezione 32-Le teorie del commercio internazionale
Lezione 33-Le politiche commerciali e le giustificazioni del protezionismo
Lezione 34-Bilancia dei pagamenti, regimi valutari e operazioni finanziarie
Lezione 35-Le politiche di riequilibrio della bilancia dei pagamenti
Lezione 36-Il modello di Mundell-Fleming
Lezione 37-Le politiche di mercato aperto

Bibliografia
Indice dei nomi

(forthcoming in J. Morgan, ed., What is this ‘school’ called neoclassical economics? Debating the Issues)

This paper comments on Tony Lawson’s insightful essay in philosophical history of thought, ‘What is this ‘school’ called neoclassical economics?’ (2013). Lawson resurrects and persuasively argues for the continuing appropriateness of Veblen’s original intended use of the label to denote economists who recognize that the world they seek to model is dynamically complex and that economic causal relationships are typically context-sensitive, but who nevertheless use modeling technologies that tend to systematically obscure this complexity. In the present paper I accept the Veblen / Lawson definition, but reject Lawson’s claim that economists can escape from the neoclassical predicament by embracing his critical realist ontology and by dropping their insistence on modeling economic phenomena mathematically. Based partly on general claims about the structure of the world derived from Ladyman & Ross’s Every Thing Must Go (2007), and partly on considerations specific to economics and its history, I argue that the neoclassical predicament is inescapable. Indeed, I suggest, the current gulf between explicit theoretical representation of economic reality and our ability to identify new policy alternatives based on machine computation of statistical patterns we can’t closely understand will continue to grow. We won’t ever be so incurious as to refrain from telling the best stories we can about the real economic patterns our machines identify, but it should become increasingly clear to us that these stories are such extreme simplifications that our attitude towards them should never be one of naïve belief. Framing economic accounts verbally, using folk metaphysical conceptions of entities and causes, is a representational filtering that systematically distorts our ontological picture. Use of more, rather than less, sophisticated mathematics is therefore recommended. The best economics we can do will thus always be neoclassical, in Veblen’s and Lawson’s sense of that description.

JEL codes: B20, B40, C00, C40, C50

Hangi bilim dalında olursa olsun metodoloji bir araştırmanın temelini oluşturur.  En kısa ve öz bir ifade ile metodoloji herhangi bir konuyu analiz etmek ve problemleri çözmek amacına yönelik bilimsel ve sistematik  yöntem ve yaklaşımlardır. İktisat Metodolojisi için de bu geçerlidir. İktisadın kendisinin bir bilim dalı olup olmadığı tartışmalarını bir tarafa bırakacak olursak iktisat adı verilen akademik disiplin içerisinde de teorik ve sistematik yaklaşımlar ve yöntemler sözkonusudur. Bu yaklaşımların ve yöntemlerin hangisinin doğru olduğu ya da olmadığı iktisat metodolojisinin zorluğuna işaret eder. İktisatçılar arasında hangi yaklaşımların (örneğin, multi-disipliner iktisat, inter-disipliner iktisat, trans-disipliner iktisat vs.) ve hangi yöntemlerin (tümdengelim, tümevarım, a Priori ve a Posteriori, apriorizm karşı ampirizm, gözlem, deney ve saire.) doğru olduğu konusunda bir uzlaşma ve anlaşma maalesef sözkonusu değildir.

İktisat ve Metodoloji (İktisat Biliminde Kapsam, Yöntem ve Sınırlar) başlığını taşıyan bu kitapta yer alan muhtelif makaleler içerisinde metodolojik konular farklı bakış açılarıyla ele alınmaktadır. İktisat metodolojisi konusunu ülkemizde ilk defa ele alan bilim insanlarının başında gelen Prof.Dr.Ömer Demir ve Prof.Dr.Turan Yay katkıları ile bizleri onurlandırmışlardır. Prof.Dr.Serap Durusoy ve Doç.Dr. Özgün Burak Kaymakçı da iktisat metodolojisi alanında çalışmalar yapmış kıymetli bilim insanlarıdır. Bu kitaba yaptıkları katkılar dolayısıyla kendilerine teşekkürlerimizi sunuyoruz.

Bugüne değin genç meslektaşlarımı  daima motive etmek ve çalışma-ya teşvik etmek gayesiyle editörlük görevlerimi gönüllü olarak pay-laştım.  Doç.Dr. Serdar Yay yaklaşık 10 yıldan bu yana inter-disipliner /trans-disipliner araştırmalarıma katkılar sunmuş kıymetli bir araştırmacıdır. Sayın Dr. Serdar Göcen de bu kitaba editör/yazar olarak katkılar sunmuştur.

The starting point of this paper is the question how to explain mainstream economics’ great level of acceptance in the face of its poor empirical track record. An explanation is provided in terms of a combination of unification and, most importantly,
inference to the best explanation. This paper asks whether the appeal of mainstream economics to inference to the best explanation is justified and as a consequence questions one
of the main reasons for the dominance of mainstream economics today. The final section integrates the ideas from the previous sections into a general framework for explanatory
pluralism.

The mainstream model of homo economicus or "economic man" has been both a major tool for modern economic theory as well as the focus of much criticism and debate. The Dutch Neo-Calvinist tradition can be fruitfully placed into dialogue with neoclassical economics, bringing both challenges to as well as opportunities for cross-disciplinary edification. Neo-Calvinism can both acknowledge the legitimacy as well as the limitations of the neoclassical model, with implications for the use of social scientific models more generally. While affirming the relative legitimacy (or we might say "sovereignty") of homo economicus, the Neo-Calvinist tradition also raises challenges that social scientific models must grapple with, particularly with respect to the latent anthropological and theological assumptions about reality that are inevitably embedded in any model.

https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2022.2038113

What are black swans? Why are mainstream economists so often caught off guard by financial crises? Furthermore, have mainstream responses merely deepened economic inequality and instability? Rather than simply comparing competing theories and methods— economics’ ‘ontological turn’ posits that what is foremostly required is an audit of a theory's metaphysical commitments. That is, to interrogate what economics presumes there is to observe and interact with. Seeking to garner greater analytical purchase over the ‘real-world,’ this reckoning with the ontological basis of divergent schools of thought has birthed several multidisciplinary syntheses— namely, Austrian-materialism (Lewis, 2005) and Keynesian-critical realism (Lawson, 2003). Alternatively, and in support of the constructivist claim that social relations ultimately drive economic policy and markets, this paper resituates and extends Wesley Widmaier’s (2004) vision of a Keynesian-constructivism within the broader ontological turn. Herein, this paper interrogates the concept of black swans vis-à-vis Post-Keynesian understandings of business cycles, demand-side logics, and the concept of Modern Money— en route to establishing its own innovative methodological framework. The paper provides a theoretical and analytical basis for further studies into whether economic conditions can be black-boxed (i.e., the now popular idea of a "silent depression" and/or silent crises).

Translation is a task challenging enough, and legal translation is a task that is even more so. This is because not only is human language unique, but the law is also unique in that it reflects the culture of the time and place. Just as languages are grouped into families that originate from a particular protolanguage, so are laws, or more specifically jurisdiction-based national bodies of law. As a result, several legal traditions have evolved around the world, each of them viewing the “legal world” in a very different way through very different “law lenses”, with each of them being expressed in a different human language—most likely an official language of the jurisdiction. In one word, there is probably no uniform way of approaching and understanding the laws and norms of every society. Against this backdrop, it would not take too much imagination for one to understand how difficult and problematic legal translation, the process of expressing a piece of legislation or witness (mis)representation presented in one language from one jurisdiction in another language, could actually be. This is why translation has seen quite a few turns over the past few decades, with scholars trying to ascertain the true nature of translation from different angles by establishing different turns that come with specific perspectives and approaches. In this research of mine, I would like to demonstrate that legal translation that involves a change in legal tradition will likely be more complex than legal translation that involves two jurisdictions that belong to the same legal tradition, and that this could be accounted for by means of economics. As such, the legal translator will be portrayed as a rational and self-interested economic being that is constantly calculating and weighing all potential costs and benefits in the line of his work for the ultimate maximization of his profit/utility. It is my belief that while jurilinguistics, the synergy of the law and language as well as translation, has been making a great effort in theorizing the language of the law, most problems arising from legal translation, insofar as legal language and legal tradition are concerned, would be best explained via economics, making an economic turn of translation studies helpful, if not indispensable. By way of some examples from bijural and/or
7
multilingual jurisdictions around the world (most notably Canada, Switzerland and the European Union), and by means of a range of economic trajectories such as risk, game theory, moral hazard and externalities, I will endeavour to show my readers that legal translation is actually a very economic, as well as economical, process, while, in fact, the use of official term banks and the legislation co-drafting procedure are, despite their conspicuous purpose to help the legal translator navigate and weather the difficulties of translation, also a direct result of some very economic thinking and logic. Further, in my final section, I will argue that legal drafting that involves a change in legal tradition, which has been a topic of research of jurilinguistics featuring only limited publication hitherto, should become the subject of economic analysis too, as economics may well have strikingly innovative and sophisticated input for it. To this, the practice of co-drafting as carried out in Canada and Switzerland, as well as the reception of Western law by Japan and then subsequently by a handful of Asian countries via Japan will be briefly covered under jurilinguistics for its very relevance. Most of all, in light of the several turns that have occurred and flourished in translation studies scholarship over the past few decades and the impact they have had on the theory and practice of translation, I would like to present to the young discipline of translation studies yet another turn, a turn that I believe is scientific and helpful: the economic turn. I think that only through the adoption of rigorous economic methodology—alongside those of sociology and all others—can the true nature of legal translation as a human activity be ascertained and the in-depth mode in which legal translation is actually carried out be fully understood and justified

In trying to assess the content and significance of Keynes's attempted revolution in economic methodology, historians have almost exclusively focused on the General Theory. By highlighting the legacy of the Treatise on Probability for Keynes's economic writings, this article provides evidence of strong methodological continuity among the Tract on Monetary Reform, the Treatise on Money, and the General Theory, despite radical differences in the theories. We argue that the novelty of Keynes's approach lies in offering a method of analysis requiring cooperation on the part of the reader, in the effort to tackle the complexity of the economic material.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the so-called “Paradox of Thrift” using Rescher’s method of paradox resolution. We will conclude that besides Rescher’s ranking of plausibility criteria, the solution of the “Paradox of Thrift” will depend ultimately on the ontological and methodological framework we accept in order to analyze economic matters: the keynesian one or the neoclassical one.

This insightful Modern Guide offers a broad coverage of questions and controversies encountered by contemporary economists. A refreshing approach to philosophy of economics, chapters comprise a range of methodological and theoretical perspectives, from lab and field experiments to macroeconomics and applied policy work, written using a familiar, accessible language for economists.

Highlighting key areas of methodological controversy, the Modern Guide looks at estimating utility functions in choice data, causal modelling, and ethics in randomised control trials. Chapters further explore topical issues, including: economists’ attitudes to other disciplines; gender bias in economic research; methods of modelling social influence in economics; behavioural welfare economics; anti-poverty policy controversies; and inflexible reliance on DSGE models in macroeconomics. Furthermore, it explores the implications of the last financial crisis for macroeconomic confidence, and ways to adapt abstract theory to everyday policy advice.

Avoiding philosophical jargon, and with the majority of chapters written by economists, this Modern Guide will challenge economists and scholars of philosophy of economics to engage with different approaches to the topic. This will also be a useful tool for policy makers administering nudges, development initiatives, macro-forecasting and monetary policy.

Svaka teorija, prema mišljenju metodologa, trebalo bi da dobro objašnjava stvarnost, ali i da vrši precizna predviđanja. Neoinstitucionalna ekonomija, kao savremena ekonomska misao, bavi se institucionalnom uslovljenošću ljudskog ponašanja, ali i ekonomske efikasnosti privreda. Nastala je kao oblik kritike važnih nalaza ekonomske škole glavnog toka – neoklasične ekonomije. U literaturi se mogu sresti tri glavna modela savremenog kapitalizma: anglo-saksonski, evropski i azijski. Iako su pojedine ekonomije ovih modela u svetskom vrhu po razvoju, sami modeli razlikuju se u više pogleda – prema korporativnoj praksi, položaju tržišta rada, pravnim porecima i tako dalje – ali, pre svega, u istorijskim kontekstima u kojima su se institucionalno oblikovali. Proučavanjem tih razlika i njihovog uzroka, stičemo znanje o tome kakvo je naše mesto unutar evropskog regiona, i šta je potrebno uraditi ne bi li se razvojni jaz umanjio. U tu svrhu, vršena su i mnoga empirijska testiranja koja potkrepljuju nalaze (neo)institucionalne ekonomije.

This textbook of Economic Policy is made of four parts:
1. Methodological questions;
2. Welfare Economics;
3. Economic models in a closed economy
4. Economic Policy in an open economy.

La politica economica studia il processo decisionale delle istituzioni economiche e finanziarie interne di un paese, come il mercato, lo Stato, la banca centrale, e i comportamenti aggregati degli operatori economici, come le famiglie e le imprese.  Le lezioni contenute in questo volume indicano i filoni principali del pensiero teorico che ha seguito i successi e gli insuccessi dell'azione dei mercati e dei poteri pubblici sui sistemi economici. L'esposizione è articolata in tre parti. Alle questioni metodologiche principali della ricerca in economia e politica, segue, nella prima parte, la trattazione dell'economia del benessere. La seconda parte è dedicata ai modelli con cui il pensiero economico ha perseguito gli obiettivi micro e macroeconomici in economia chiusa. La terza parte tratta gli stessi temi nel contesto di un'economia aperta alla internazionalizzazione dei mercati, in presenza dei vincoli posti dalla loro progressiva globalizzazione.

Indice generale

Premessa
Indice dei grafici
Indice delle tabelle
Acronimi
Piano delle lezioni

Lezione 1-Introduzione

Questioni di metodo

Lezione 2-I limiti dello studioso e la varianza comportamentale
Lezione 3- Errore e non prescrittività delle proposizioni di politica economica
Lezione 4-Analisi economica e principi di politica

Parte prima: l’economia del benessere

Lezione 5-Paradigmi e modelli di politica economica
Lezione 6-Le preferenze sociali
Lezione 7-Miglioramento e ottimo paretiani
Lezione 8-I limiti dell’economia del benessere paretiana e i tentativi di superarli
Lezione 9-La teoria delle votazioni
Lezione 10-Funzioni del benessere, ottimo sociale e teorie della giustizia
Lezione 11-Il mercato e lo Stato
Lezione 12-I due teoremi fondamentali dell’economia del benessere e quello del second best
Lezione 13-I limiti del mercato per gli obiettivi microeconomici
Lezione 14-Il teorema di Coase e le sue critiche
Lezione 15-I limiti del mercato per gli obiettivi macroeconomici

Parte seconda: i modelli di economia chiusa

Lezione 16-La neutralità della moneta
Lezione 17- La Grande Crisi e l’economia di Keynes
Lezione 18- La sintesi neoclassica
Lezione 19- La Nuova Macroeconomia Classica
Lezione 20- Le rifondazioni keynesiana e neoclassica e le relazioni tra disoccupazione e inflazione
Lezione 21- La programmazione economica
Lezione 22- I limiti dell’intervento pubblico
Lezione 23- Le politiche micro: obiettivi e strumenti
Lezione 24- Le politiche micro: alcune applicazioni
Lezione 25- L’analisi costi benefici: aspetti teprici
Lezione 26- L’analisi costi benefici: le fasi procedurali
Lezione 27-La moneta e l’economia monetaria
Lezione 28-La politica monetaria: obbiettivi e strumenti   
Lezione 29-La politica di bilancio: aspetti storici e teorici
Lezione 30-Le politiche del debito pubblico
Lezione 31-La politica dei redditi

Parte terza: la politica economica in economia aperta

Lezione 32-Le teorie del commercio internazionale
Lezione 33-Le politiche commerciali e le giustificazioni del protezionismo
Lezione 34-Bilancia dei pagamenti, regimi valutari e operazioni finanziarie
Lezione 35-Le politiche di riequilibrio della bilancia dei pagamenti
Lezione 36-Il modello di Mundell-Fleming
Lezione 37-Le politiche di mercato aperto

Bibliografia
Indice dei nomi
Indice tematico

The rise of behavioral economics since the 1980s led to richer mutual influence between economic and psychological theory and experimentation. However, as behavioral economics has become increasingly integrated into the main stream in economics, and as psychology has remained damagingly methodologically conservative, this convergence has recently gone into reverse. At the same time, growing appreciation among economists of the limitations of atomistic individualism, along with advantages in econometric modeling flexibility by comparison with psychometrics, is leading economists to become more pluralistic than psychologists about the ontology of behavioral causation and structures. This, combined with economists' growing interest in network models, is drawing economists closer in theory and practice to sociologists who use quantitative or mixed methods.

Several contemporary economic theories revolve around different concepts: market failures, institutions, transaction costs, information asymmetries, motivational diversity, cognitive limitations, strategic behaviors and evolutionary stability. In recent years, many economists have argued that the increase in circulation and mobilization of these new and heterogeneous concepts and their associated methodologies (e.g., experiments, evolutionary modelling, simulations) signify the death of neoclassical economics.

Late Neoclassical Economics: The Restoration of Theoretical Humanism in Contemporary Economic Theory draws on the work of Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault and the Amherst School, to construct the concept of a self-transparent and self-conscious human subject (Homo economicus) as the theoretical humanist core of the neoclassical tradition. Instead of identifying the emergent heterogeneity as a break from neoclassicism, this book offers a careful genealogy of many of the new concepts and approaches - including evolutionary game theory, experimental economics and behavioural economics - and reads their elaboration as part of the restoration of the theoretical humanist core of the tradition. ‘Late neoclassical economics’ is therefore characterized as a collection of diverse approaches which have emerged in response to the drift towards structuralism.

This book is suitable for those who study political economy, history of economic thought and philosophy of economics. The arguments put forward in this text will also resonate with anyone who is interested in the fate of the neoclassical tradition and the future of economic theory.

Is it possible to be ‘irrational’ without being ‘uneconomic’? What is the link between ‘Value’ and ‘values’? What do economists do when they ‘explain’? We live in times when the economic logic has become unquestionable and all-powerful so that our quotidian economic experiences are defined by their scientific construal. This book is the result of a multifaceted investigation into the nature of knowledge produced by economics, and the construction of the category that is termed ‘economic’ with its implied exclusions. It is an attempt to think economics Otherwise, that is, a questioning of economics as if difference mattered.
Nitasha Kaul re-examines certain understood ways of thinking about economics as a discipline, especially in relation to questions of identity and difference. This book explores the notion that economics is not a timeless, universal, objective science but a changing response to the problems of knowledge and administration. The epistemological inheritance of economics is ‘rooted’ in the enlightenment, and it also inherits the liberal paradoxes of that age. Kaul argues that the juxtaposition of identity with economic (culture/economy) is essential, and can only be achieved by critiquing establishment economists’ discourse on identity, and taking feminist poststructural and postcolonial work seriously. The author challenges the assumption that there is a simple linkage between the category economic, the entity economy and the study of economics. She envisions an economics in the plural: contextual, social, political – econo-mixes.
This book brings together some of the most urgent topics of the day – the power of economics as a discipline, the questions of difference and the politics of identity, and feminist perspectives on this. It will be particularly relevant to heterodox economists, feminist theorists, postcolonial studies scholars, social and cultural theorists, philosophers and history of ideas or intellectual history of thought scholars.

This article supports claims that critical realism philosophy of science, as refounded in the hands of Roy Bhaskar, offers valuable knowledge enhancing insight into the advancement of Marx’s research program. However, it maintains that key principles set out by Bhaskar have not been adequately assimilated by those working with critical realism in the field of Marxist studies. When they are properly considered, they point to the necessity of reconstructing Marx’s corpus on a divergent basis from the conventional form it has assumed since the codification of “Marxism” by Karl Kautsky in the late nineteenth century as an overarching theory of history or historical materialism, wherein Marx’s economic studies in Capital are portrayed as but a subtheory. The article summarily breaks down three cardinal scientific principles elaborated by Bhaskar, which carry the most vital implications for Marxism. These are the bringing of ontology “back in” to theory construction, the robust case made for social science as a capital-S science, and the specification of retroduction as strategy for scientific discovery. It then explores the principles with regard to three abiding and interrelated questions of the Marxist research program: first is the very condition of intelligibility of economic theory; second is the question of the raison d’être for the dialectical architecture of Capital; third is the social scientific implications of the cognitive sequence in Marxism. In this endeavor the article introduces work in the Uno-Sekine tradition of Japanese Marxism. It shows how Uno’s reconstruction of Marxism is closely supported by Bhaskar’s fundamental criteria for science in a way that serves to strengthen Marx’s own scientific claims for his work.

We convey our experiences developing and implementing an online experiment to elicit subjective beliefs and economic preferences. The COVID-19 pandemic and associated closures of our laboratories required us to conduct an online experiment in order to collect beliefs and preferences associated with the pandemic in a timely manner. Since we had not previously conducted a similar multi-wave online experiment, we faced design and implementation considerations that are not present when running a typical laboratory experiment. By discussing these details more fully, we hope to contribute to the online experiment methodology literature at a time when many other researchers may be considering conducting an online experiment for the first time. We focus primarily on methodology; in a complementary study we focus on initial research findings.

In this dissertation, I place macroeconometric modeling at the center of the history of twentieth century macroeconomics, i.e. as a history of macroeconometrics, and ask two central questions: (1) What exactly were the objectives and the forces driving the development of macroeconometric modeling, and what kind of tools and institutions did macroeconomists build to observe, understand, and control the US postwar economy? (2) What were the effects that the construction and use of these tools had on the production of macroeconomic knowledge? Taking Lawrence R. Klein as a vehicle, I travel across the economics discipline of the 1940s and 1950s, and study the intersection between the history of macroeconomics and the history of econometrics, providing a new understanding of twentieth century economics as a “tooled” discipline, in which theory (economic and statistical), application, expertise, and policy become embedded within one scientific tool: a macroeconometric model. Consequently, I present the history of macroeconomics not as the product of monolithic ideological and purely theoretical issues, but rather of divergent epistemological views and modeling strategies that go back to the debates between US-Walrasian and US-Marshallian approaches to empirical macroeconomics in which macroeconometric modeling forms the heart of macroeconomics. My thesis is that Klein was the most important figure in the creation of a new way to produce scientific knowledge that consisted in the construction and use of complex tools (macroeconometric models) within specific institutional configurations (econometric laboratories) and for explicit policy and scientific objectives, in which well-defined roles of experts (scientific teams) were embodied within a new scientific practice (macroeconometric modeling).

The outburst of the 2008 global economic crisis sparked myriad criticism on mainstream neoclassical economic theory, which is blamed for not even have considered the possibility of the kind of collapse that the subprime mortgage meltdown unleashed. In this paper, it is argued that what happened was a case of malpractice by hundreds of economists in banks and rating agencies who created and certified as almost risk-free securities assets that were actually highly risky as the events after 2007 overwhelmingly showed. Such a massive case of malpractice denounces deep failures in the regulatory system. The deregulation movement that took place during the 1980s and 1990s was inspired by an almost religious belief in the power of market forces to solve any economic problem. Neoclassical economics can be blamed for creating the ideological climate which stimulated the deregulation movement in the U.S.A during those decades. After discussing some aspects of economics methodology, arguing the need to approach the economy as an interactive complex system, and discussing the use of mathematics in economics, it is argued that the main object of economists' efforts should be economic illness rather than economic health. Finally, a list of 15 guidelines is sketched out for improving the methodological approach as well the contents of economic analysis.

Nearly every economist has at some point in the standard coursework been exposed to a brief explanation that the origin of the word "economy" can be traced back to the Greek word oikonomia, which in turn is composed of two words: oikos, which is usually translated as "household"; and nemein, which is best translated as "management and dispensation." Thus, the cursory story usually goes, the term oikonomia referred to "household management", and while this was in some loose way linked to the idea of budgeting, it has little or no relevance to contemporary economics. This article introduces in more detail what the ancient Greek philosophers meant by "oikonomia." It begins with a short history of the word. It then explores some of the key elements of oikonomia, while offering some comparisons and contrasts with modern economic thought. For example, both Ancient Greek oikonomia and contemporary economics study human behavior as a relationship between ends and means which have alternative uses. However, while both approaches hold that the rationality of any economic action is dependent on the frugal use of means, contemporary economics is largely neutral between ends, while in ancient economic theory, an action is considered economically rational only when taken towards a praiseworthy end. Moreover, the ancient philosophers had a distinct view of what constituted such an end—specifically, acting as a philosopher or as an active participant in the life of the city-state.

This article reviews ancient texts dedicated to the art of economics, narrating how the master was to manage his wife, slaves and things. The discourse on the economy of things focuses on defining the proper limits of wealth. The economy of the slaves included multiple technologies of classification, management and supervision that were to guide the master and the matron in their ‘use’ of slaves. The wife was a freeborn member of the polis who was doomed to spend her entire life in the economy as a governed subject who partakes in government only within the confines of the oikos.