Economic methodology: an historical introduction

✍ Scribed by Maas, Harro; Waters, Liz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 203
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The book provides an historical introduction to the methodology of economics through the eyes of (political) economists. It starts with John Stuart Mill's seminal essay on the definition and method of political economy of 1836 and then shows how the actual practice of political economists changed to such an extent that economists not only changed their methods of inquiry, but also their self-perception as (political) economists.

From intellectuals and journalists operating to a large extent in the public sphere, they transformed into experts who developed their tools of research increasingly behind the scenes. No longer did they try to influence policy agendas via a public discourse to which they were party; rather they targeted policy makers directly and with instruments that showed them as independent and objective policy advisors; the tools of the trade changing all the while.

Harro Maas tracks this process of development through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, analyzing the growth of empirical, mathematical modelling, but also the emergence of the experiment in economics as well as the similarities and differences between (empirical) mathematical modelling and material experimentation.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Title Page......Page 8
Copyright Page......Page 9
Table of Contents......Page 10
List of figures......Page 11
Preface......Page 13
Acknowledgements......Page 15
1 Introduction......Page 16
2 Economics: inductive or deductive science?......Page 23
3 Economics and statistics......Page 35
4 Business-cycle research: the rise of modelling......Page 53
5 John Maynard Keynes and Jan Tinbergen: the dramatist and the model-builder......Page 75
6 Milton Friedman and the Cowles Commission for Econometric Research: structural models and ‘as if’ methodology......Page 91
7 Modelling between fact and fiction: thought experiments in economics......Page 114
8 Experimentation in economics......Page 130
9 Simulation with models......Page 165
10 Economics as science: the rules of the game......Page 186
Further reading......Page 190
Index......Page 196