Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics

Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics

Author: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-06-30

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0226819442

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Introduction The Argument in Brief -- Economics Is in Scientific Trouble -- An Antique, Unethical, and Badly Measured Behaviorism Doesn't Yield Good Economic Science or Good Politics -- Economics Needs to Get Serious about Measuring the Economy -- The Number of Unmeasured "Imperfections" Is Embarrassingly Long -- Historical Economics Can Measure Them, Showing Them to Be Small -- The Worst of Orthodox Positivism Lacks Ethics and Measurement -- Neoinstitutionalism Shares in the Troubles -- Even the Best of Neoinstitutionalism Lacks Measurement -- And "Culture," or Mistaken History, Will Not Repair It -- That Is, Neoinstitutionalism, Like the Rest of Behavioral Positivism, Fails as History and as Economics -- As It Fails in Logic and in Philosophy -- Neoinstitutionalism, in Short, Is Not a Scientific Success -- Humanomics Can Save the Science -- But It's Been Hard for Positivists to Understand Humanomics -- Yet We Can Get a Humanomics -- And Although We Can't Save Private Max U -- We Can Save an Ethical Humanomics.


Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics

Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics

Author: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-06-30

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0226818314

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A penetrating analysis from one of the defining voices of contemporary economics. In Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics, Deirdre Nansen McCloskey zeroes in on the authoritarian cast of recent economics, arguing for a re-focusing on the liberated human. The behaviorist positivism fashionable in the field since the 1930s treats people from the outside. It yielded in Williamson and North a manipulative neo-institutionalism. McCloskey argues that institutions as causes are mainly temporary and intermediate, not ultimate. They are human-made, depending on words, myth, ethics, ideology, history, identity, professionalism, gossip, movies, what your mother taught you. Humans create conversations as they go, in the economy as in the rest of life. In engaging and erudite prose, McCloskey exhibits in detail the scientific failures of neo-institutionalism. She proposes a “humanomics,” an economics with the humans left in. Humanomics keeps theory, quantification, experiment, mathematics, econometrics, though insisting on more true rigor than is usual. It adds what can be learned about the economy from history, philosophy, literature, and all the sciences of humans. McCloskey reaffirms the durability of “market-tested innovation” against the imagined imperfections to be corrected by a perfect government. With her trademark zeal and incisive wit, she rebuilds the foundations of economics.


Bettering Humanomics

Bettering Humanomics

Author: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2023-06-05

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 022677144X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey's latest meticulous work examines how economics can become a more "human" science. Economic historian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has distinguished herself through her writing on the Great Enrichment and the betterment of the poor—not just materially but spiritually. In Bettering Humanomics she continues her intellectually playful yet rigorous analysis with a focus on humans rather than the institutions. Going against the grain of contemporary neo-institutional and behavioral economics which privilege observation over understanding, she asserts her vision of “humanomics,” which draws on the work of Bart Wilson, Vernon Smith, and most prominently, Adam Smith. She argues for an economics that uses a comprehensive understanding of human action beyond behaviorism. McCloskey clearly articulates her points of contention with believers in “imperfections,” from Samuelson to Stiglitz, claiming that they have neglected scientific analysis in their haste to diagnose the ills of the system. In an engaging and erudite manner, she reaffirms the global successes of market-tested betterment and calls for empirical investigation that advances from material incentives to an awareness of the human within historical and ethical frameworks. Bettering Humanomics offers a critique of contemporary economics and a proposal for an economics as a better human science.


Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology

Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology

Author: Luca Fiorito

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2023-10-31

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1835495168

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Volume 41A of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology features a symposium on “Religion, the Scottish Enlightenment, and the Rise of Liberalism,” a new research essay by Syed Mohib Ali, and a roundtable on the institutionalist economics of Geoffrey Hodgson.


The Palgrave Handbook of Methodological Individualism

The Palgrave Handbook of Methodological Individualism

Author: Nathalie Bulle

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-12-27

Total Pages: 751

ISBN-13: 3031415124

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

While methodological individualism is a fundamental approach within the social sciences, it is often misunderstood. This highlights the need for a discursive and up-to-date reference work analyzing this approach’s classic arguments and assumptions in the light of contemporary issues in sociology, economics and philosophy. This two-volume handbook presents the first comprehensive overview of methodological individualism. Chapters discuss historical and contemporary debates surrounding this central approach within the social sciences, as well as cutting edge developments related to the individualist tradition with philosophical and scientific implications. Bringing together multiple contributions from the world’s leading experts on this important tradition of theorizing, this collective endeavor provides teachers, researchers and students in sociology, economics, and philosophy with a reliable and critical understanding of the founding principles, key thinkers and intellectual development of MI since the late 19th century. ​


Theories and Models in Economics

Theories and Models in Economics

Author: Hans Lind

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2024-04-12

Total Pages: 135

ISBN-13: 1035332957

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This innovative book uses in-depth empirical studies of scientific articles and takes inspiration from Nobel laureates to explore how theories and models are used in economics. Hans Lind ultimately illustrates that economics studies a ‘chaos-theoretic’ system where a theory is a framework that helps formulate hypotheses rather than a set of statements about how an economy works.


Economic Growth and Inequality

Economic Growth and Inequality

Author: Laurent Dobuzinskis

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-02-02

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1000836649

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In an era of increasing inequalities, and also of deep anxieties about the consequences of two major economic crises, economists are faced with a major question: can economic growth be achieved without inequalities? Economic Growth and Inequality critically evaluates the economic literature on this question from a pragmatic perspective, seeking to reconcile those who regard economic liberties as a paramount value, and critics who object that prioritizing these liberties leads to inequitable outcomes. The book presents an overview of the models used by economists to define and measure inequalities and the ongoing dialogues between political philosophers and economists in an effort to find solutions to the problems. It explores Rawlsian justice, Sen’s capability theory, and the theory of rent and compares and contrasts the most often discussed institutions and policies designed for remedying poverty and reducing inequalities. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on some of the most pressing problems of our time and will be of great interest to readers of political economy, public policy, moral philosophy, and history of economic and political thought.


Institutions and Economic Development

Institutions and Economic Development

Author: Bryan Cheang

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-04-29

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 9819908442

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is a survey of the field of development studies from a political economy perspective. It first reviews the academic literature on development and highlights the fundamental importance of institutions and social values, over and above other alternative theories, as determinants in long-run development. In this context, the book draws from the works of Nobel Laureates Douglass North, F.A. Hayek and Elinor Ostrom, and argues that the ingredients of property rights, the rule of law, and market freedoms are essential in generating socio-economic progress. Successful reforms however are not simply a function of constructing formal institutions, but must cohere with the social values, norms, and cultural commitments of local communities. It is in this spirit that the book theorises on the oft-neglected role that political entrepreneurs play in driving endogenous institutional change. Specifically, this book integrates the theoretical discussion on market-driven development with a range of case studies from around the world, featuring the bottom-up efforts of local change agents to pursue institutional reforms and changes in social opinion.


Humanomics

Humanomics

Author: Vernon L. Smith

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-01-24

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1107199379

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Articulates Adam Smith's model of human sociality, illustrated in experimental economic games that relate easily to business and everyday life. Shows how to re-humanize the study of economics in the twenty-first century by integrating Adam Smith's two great books into contemporary empirical analysis.