Modularity is the mark of a type of independence from context. The same functional relationship between variables will hold in a given component of the contributing mechanisms whether or not there is a change in a different component. The total effect may change when different components contribute, but the operation of the modular mechanism will […]
economics
If scientific progress in economics — as Robert Lucas and other latter-day followers of Milton Friedman seem to think — lies in our ability to tell ‘better and better stories’ one would of course expect economics journals to be filled with articles supporting the stories with empirical evidence. However, the journals still show a striking […]
The euro has taken away the possibility for national governments to manage their economies in a meaningful way — and in Italy and Greece a couple of years ago, the people had to pay the true costs of its concomitant misguided austerity policies. The unfolding of the repeated economic crises in Euroland during the last […]
In mainstream economic theory, institutions were long taken for granted. As the far-reaching consequences of institutional assumptions have become increasingly difficult to ignore, economists have, in recent times, made greater efforts to incorporate institutions into their models. This renewed interest in broadening economic theory to encompass economic and political institutions has centred on the analysis […]
One of the most widespread myths in economics, but also in sociology and political science, is that game theory provides “tools” that can help solve concrete problems in these branches – especially in economics. Introductory and advanced textbooks thus often speak of the “applications” of game theory that are being made, giving the impression that […]
Nowadays there is almost no place whatsoever in economics education for courses in the history of economic thought and economic methodology. The standard view among mainstream economists is that students shouldn’t think about what they are doing, but just do it. This is deeply worrying. A science that doesn’t self-reflect and asks important methodological and […]
Modern mainstream (neoclassical) economics relies to a large degree on the notion of probability. To be amenable to applied economic analysis, economic observations allegedly have to be conceived as random events that are analyzable within a probabilistic framework. But is it really necessary to model the economic system as a system where randomness can only […]
You ask me what all idiosyncrasy is in philosophers? … For instance their lack of the historical sense, their hatred even of the idea of Becoming, their Egyptianism. They imagine that they do honour to a thing by divorcing it from history sub specie æterni—when they make a mummy of it. Friedrich Nietzsche Nowadays there […]
“Ideas in which economists have reposed the greatest confidence have been proved wrong and therewith, not surprisingly, the responding policy. And this has happened under circumstances which admit of no really plausible explanation, rationalization, or alibi—things in which we economists are more than minimally accomplished. There was, to be sure, more than a suspicion of […]
Given the lack of consensus in existing empirical analyzes and the difficulties of making causal inferences from macro-level panel data analyzes, it remains an open empirical question how cutting taxes on the rich affects economic outcomes. We believe the question is best answered by looking at the effects of major tax cuts packages, as the […]