economics

During the time period from 1925 to 1933 — when he still considered himself a ‘central-theoretician’ and a ‘pure economic theorist’ — Gunnar Myrdal wanted to apply to economic doctrines an ‘immanent method’ of criticism. His main interest was to criticize the received economic theory that had preserved structures of normative speculation built upon the […]

The problem of evaluating models built for forecasting is that one cannot get around invariance. There must be a stable bridge that connects the past and pres. ent with the future … To evaluate invariance its domain should be considered. In other words, one has to investigate what the list of all relevant non-negligible potential […]

We have continually noted the tendency of Sraffians to subordinate the study of the substantive nature of economic phenomena to the requirements of logical rigor, and for Sraffians rigor equals GET (General Equilibrium Theory), the simultaneous determination of endogenous economic variables. The marriage of Sraffian economics and GET is not a promising avenue for studying […]

. [The interview was given to Mark Blaug in 1995. In transcript: “I think there is an element of truth in the view that the superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times [is necessary]. Once it is debunked, [it] takes away one of the bulwarks that every society must have against expenditure […]

While the paternity of the theoretical apparatus underlying the new neoclassical synthesis in macro is contested, there is wide agreement that the methodological framework was largely architected by Robert Lucas … Bringing a representative agent meant foregoing the possibility to tackle inequality, redistribution and justice concerns. Was it deliberate? How much does this choice owe […]

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a mainstream New Keynesian economist for a moment. We would never want to walk in them for long because our self esteem would plummet as we realised what frauds we were. But suspend judgement for a while because to understand what is wrong with the current domination of…

Siendo en su corazón una subdisciplina dentro de las matemáticas puras, los teóricos de juegos no están demasiado preocupados por si la teoría de los juegos representa fenómenos del mundo real. Bien. Pero como la mayoría de los científicos sociales tienen una opinión diferente, los teóricos de juegos también deben aceptar que, para la mayoría […]

Suppose I want to play a game. Let’s say we are tossing a coin. If heads come up, I win a dollar, and if tails come up, I lose a dollar. Suppose further that I believe I know that the coin is asymmetrical and that the probability of getting heads (p) is greater than 50% […]

For a good many years, Tony Lawson has been urging economists to pay attention to their ontological presuppositions. Economists have not paid much attention, perhaps because few of us know what “ontology” means. This branch of philosophy stresses the need to “grasp the nature of the reality” that is the object of study – and […]

Using ‘simplifying’ tractability or ‘heuristic’ assumptions — rational expectations, common knowledge, representative agents, linearity, additivity, ergodicity, etc — because otherwise they cannot ‘manipulate’ their models or come up with ‘rigorous ‘ and ‘precise’ predictions and explanations, does not exempt economists from having to justify their modelling choices. Being able to ‘manipulate’ things in models cannot […]