Economic Methodology

In light of the current and ongoing methodological challenges inherent in economic analysis, the thoughtful inclusion of data science, combined with certain philosophical-medical ideas and rich metaphors, is strongly suggested as a potentially fruitful approach. There exists a vivid and ongoing debate within the economics profession concerning the nature and methodology of the discipline itself. In fact, the methodological foundation of economics has been under permanent scrutiny and critical examination by many representative authors and scholars since the very beginning of the discipline's development. Two rather recent and influential books underline the impressive breadth and intensity of the philosophical discussions surrounding economic methodology, highlighting the critical nature of this conversation.

This paper reviews the results of several decades of research in the history of economic thought based on the implementation of big-data quantitative analysis. To this end, the computerization of important first editions of the oeuvres of Smith, Malthus, J.S. Mill, Marx and Marshall, as well as the complete files of the first economics journal, has made possible a growing range of more reliable and detailed evolutionist-statistical studies on national representations, cognitive distances and patterns of continuity and change in the classical and neoclassical literature over the past two-hundred years.

RESUMO: Este artigo usa uma distinção centro-periferia para caracterizar a economia contemporânea, a metodologia econômica e também a economia mundial atual. Primeiro, aplica a distinção à organização da economia contemporânea através de um exame do problema de explicar as relações e fronteiras da economia com outras disciplinas. Em segundo lugar, argumenta que a organização centro-periférica da economia é replicada numa organização similar do uso e prática da metodologia econômica contemporânea na economia. Terceiro, ela se baseia no uso do pensamento centro-periferia na própria economia com relação ao desenvolvimento desigual da economia mundial para fornecer possíveis bases para a economia e metodologia econômica sendo organizada em termos de periferia. Quarto, o artigo discute brevemente três forças potenciais de contrapeso que operam no desenvolvimento da economia contemporânea que podem funcionar contra sua organização periferia. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Periferia; economia e outras disciplinas; metodologia econômica; desenvolvimento desigual; especialização; modelagem formal; giro empírico.

Assembling contributions from top thinkers in the field, this companion offers a comprehensive and sophisticated exploration of the history of economic thought. The volume has a threefold focus: the history of economic thought, the history of economics as a discipline, and the historiography of economic thought. • Provides sophisticated introductions to a vast array of topics. • Focuses on a unique range of topics, including the history of economic thought, the history of the discipline of economics, and the historiography of economic thought.

This paper provides my reflections on the state of economic methodology and philosophy of economics as of the beginning of 2020 following the end a fifteen year coeditorship of the Journal of Economic Methodology with Wade Hands. It looks at how economic methodology and philosophy of economics, as a meta-field type of research, has changed since it emerged as a distinct subfield in economics in the 1980s. Using an evolution of technology analysis, it distinguishes two different possible scenarios for the field's future according to environmental factors operating upon it and how specialization in research may affect both it and economics, and then makes a crossdisciplinarity argument for its further development as a diverse, pluralistic domain of research.

This paper argues that agent-based modeling's innovations in method developed in terms of simulation techniques also involve an innovation in economic methodology. It shows how Epstein's generative science conception departs from conventional methodological reasoning, and employs what I term an open rather than closed approach to economic methodology associated with the roles that reflexivity, counterfactual reasoning, and abduction play in ABM. Central to this idea is that improvements in how we know something, a matter of method, determine whether we know something, a matter of methodology. The paper links this alternative view of economics and economic methodology to a social science model of economics and contrasts this with standard economics' natural science model of economics. The paper discusses what this methodological understanding implies about the concept of emergence.

Although Adam Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations is often cited as marking the birth of economics, it was really not until after the second world war that economics became the distinctive, more or less unified, and largely separate discipline summarised in the textbooks of today. Even a mere fifty years ago, it was possible for the intelligent reader to move with relative ease between economics on the one hand and political economy, sociology and social theory, psychology and philosophy on the other. This is now no longer the case, and most young economists are taught to think of their discipline, not primarily in terms of the particular ÔeconomicÕ social phenomena it was once taken to be about, but as a sophisticated and largely self-contained analytical approach to the investigation of social phenomena of any kind. Even so, economics has never been able to separate itself entirely from its sister disciplines, even at the high tide of mathematical economics and positivism during the 1970s and 1980s, and many of the most active new areas in economics currently involve some form of boundary crossing (e.g. experimental economics, neuroeconomics and computational economics to name just three). With respect to the philosophy of economics in particular, the last fifty years or so have seen a steady expansion in scholarly investigation into different connections between economics and philosophy, with the emergence of new journals, professional associations, research networks and the like. There has been a great deal of work on epistemological questions in the wake of the decline of positivism, on boundary issues and the question of whether or not economics constitutes a science, and on the rhetoric of economics, ethics, value and, latterly, the ontology of economics . It is against this background that, in 2004, three of us published the Elgar Companion to Economics and Philosophy (Davis, Marciano and Runde, 2004, henceforth the Companion), an edited collection aimed at documenting the current state of play in three important areas of the philosophy of economics: (1) Political economy as political philosophy; (2) The methodology and epistemology of economics; and (3) Social ontology and the ontology of economics.

Reflexivity has been argued to be self-defeating and potentially devastating for the sociology of scientific knowledge. We first survey various meanings associated with the concept of reflexivity and then provide an interpretation of Velázquez's Las Meñinas to generate a three-part taxonomy of reflexivity, distinguishing between 'immanent', 'epistemic' and 'transcendent' reflexivity. This provides the basis for engaging with reflexivity as a problem in the economic methodology literature, focusing on recent contributions to the topic by Hands, Sent, Mäki and Mirowski. Employment of our taxonomy clarifies the similarities and differences between the various forms of reflexivity that can be identified or are addressed in these contributions. Our main argument is that a successful response to the malign aspects of reflexivity requires a simultaneous consideration of various levels of reflexivity and relies on social-historical perspectives.

s 1776 Wealth of Nations is often cited as marking the birth of economics, it was really not until after the second world war that economics became the distinctive, more or less unified, and largely separate discipline summarised in the textbooks of today. Even a mere fifty years ago, it was possible for the intelligent reader to move with relative ease between economics on the one hand and political economy, sociology and social theory, psychology and philosophy on the other. This is now no longer the case, and most young economists are taught to think of their discipline, not primarily in terms of the particular 'economic' social phenomena it was once taken to be about, but as a sophisticated and largely self-contained analytical approach to the investigation of social phenomena of any kind. Even so, economics has never been able to separate itself entirely from its sister disciplines, even at the high tide of mathematical economics and positivism during the 1970s and 1980s, and many of the most active new areas in economics currently involve some form of boundary crossing (e.g. experimental economics, neuroeconomics and computational economics to name just three). With respect to the philosophy of economics in particular, the last fifty years or so have seen a steady expansion in scholarly investigation into different connections between economics and philosophy, with the emergence of new journals, professional associations, research networks and the like. There has been a great deal of work on epistemological questions in the wake of the decline of positivism, on boundary issues and the question of whether or not economics constitutes a science, and on the rhetoric of economics, ethics, value and, latterly, the ontology of economics . It is against this background that, in 2004, three of us published the Elgar Companion to Economics and Philosophy (Davis, Marciano and Runde, 2004, henceforth the Companion), an edited collection aimed at documenting the current state of play in three important areas of the philosophy of economics: 1. Political economy as political philosophy; 2. The methodology and epistemology of economics; and 3. Social ontology and the ontology of economics. The various authors represented in the volume were chosen on the basis of their having made distinctive contributions in these general areas, and they were asked, not only to survey the state of the field as they saw it, but also provide statements of their own positions and their perspectives on the field in question and its possible direction of development in the future. Imposed upon them, therefore, was the need both to mine the philosophical subject matter of economics and also to stand back from it to assess it in a manner that would do justice to the complex interrelations that exist between these different points of access as they saw them at the time. In effect, then, the authors were asked to anticipate the volume's appearance and its reviews, and were thus the first voice in the dialogue recorded below. The Companion was subsequently the subject of a session at the meeting of the History of Economics Society, held at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington between 24-27 June 2005, and the present 'review' comprises revised versions of the contributions to that session. The structure of the session followed the structure of the book, with separate commentaries on each of the three sections listed above, from people from a range of different perspectives: Peter Boettke and Chris Coyne (PB&CC, representatives of the Austrian School of economics), Margaret Schabas (MS, a philosopher and historian of economic ideas) and Francesco Guala (FG, a philosopher of science). The commentators were asked to concentrate on general issues that emerged in the papers comprising the section of the book they had responsibility for. Each of the commentaries was then followed by a brief reply from the editor who had principal responsibility for that section in the book, and these responses are also reproduced below.

Various paradigms in mainstream economic theory (MET) appear to have conceptualized an internalist, individualist and abstract notion of the agency/subjectivity/individuality. If MET makes the individual central to its analysis, criterion of identity and individuation must be applied to examine whether MET constructs an adequate and a substantive notion of the individual. Following Cartesian-Newtonian dualism of subjective inwardness-objective world and Smithian notion of a self-interested individual, cardinal utility approach of neo-classical economics constructs the individual as a utility maximizer involving means-ends rationality. Ordinal utility approach constructs a preference-based idea of the individual. Later developments in MET construct various notions of the individual such as an expected utility maximizer with mathematical and formal specification, an individual with bounded rationality and an individual as a bearer of strategies. MET also gives analytical primacy to the individual and uses ontological and methodological individualism (MI) as the explanatory strategies implying unidirectional causality, determinism and reductionism. The abstract notion of the individual that evolved in MET cannot differentiate between a single individual agent and a multi-individual agent. MET, which makes the individual central to its analysis and uses MI as an explanatory strategy, lacks any adequate conception of the individual and fails to adopt any substantive notion of the individual.

Bu çalışmanın amacı enflasyonun baskılanması kapsamında uygulanacak politikaların sosyolojik etkilerini incelemektir. Ortodoks politikaların merkezindeki ülkenin; “Sadece makro verilerine uygun olması mı yoksa sosyolojinin yapısına uygun iktisadi politikalarının uygulanması mı gereklidir?” sorunu tartışılacaktır. Uygulanması planlanan Ortodoks politikalar, iktisat sosyolojisi açısından yeni bir yönelime mi gidecek yoksa ana akım literatürdeki iktisat sosyolojisi yaklaşımının etkisinde mi kalacak önermeleri de çatışmanın merkezi olarak alınacaktır.
Enflasyon, faiz ve kur politikalarının “insan” faktörünün dışlanarak üretilmesi süreci incelenecektir. İnsanın merkezde olmadığı politika üretim süreçlerinde kamuoyunun politikalara inandırılması ve uygulanması bir sorunsaldır. Uygulanacak olan politikanın kamuoyu tepkisinden uzaklaştırılması gerekliliği ise çağımızın iletişim imkanları nispetinde uygulanabilirliği tartışılacaktır

El presente estudio introduce una metodología innovadora para calcular la inflación en Bolivia, considerando el impacto del tipo de cambio en el mercado real. Tradicionalmente, los índices de precios al consumidor (IPC) no han incorporado adecuadamente las fluctuaciones cambiarias,
resultando en una subestimación de la inflación real percibida tanto por consumidores como por productores.

La metodología propuesta ajusta el IPC mediante la inclusión de una variable que identifica si los productos son importados y, por ende, sujetos a variaciones en el tipo de cambio. Este ajuste permite un cálculo preciso del impacto inflacionario real, reflejando de manera fiel la realidad económica de Bolivia.

Los resultados del estudio muestran que el IPCajustado (IPCaj) revela una inflación significativamente mayor que la reportada oficialmente. Mientras
el IPC oficial muestra una relativa estabilidad, los IPCaj basados en la percepción de consumidores y productores indican inflaciones de hasta el 19,7% para el periodo de junio de 2023 a junio de 2024. Este hallazgo sugiere que los productores están absorbiendo gran parte de los costos inflacionarios, lo que podría afectar sus márgenes de ganancia y la
sostenibilidad a largo plazo.

Además, la investigación destaca la importancia de considerar las dinámicas del tipo de cambio en el diseño de políticas económicas. Las políticas actuales, que no se ajustan adecuadamente para estas variaciones, podrían no ser efectivas para mitigar los efectos adversos de la inflación. Una revisión y ajuste de estas políticas podría mejorar la estabilidad de precios y la competitividad de la economía boliviana.

Este estudio no sólo proporciona una herramienta metodológica valiosa para la medición de la inflación, sino que también ofrece insights críticos para la formulación de políticas económicas más adaptadas a
las condiciones del mercado real. La implementación de esta metodología puede ayudar a las autoridades y a las empresas a tomar decisiones más informadas y estratégicas.

En conclusión, la propuesta metodológica presentada en este estudio aporta una nueva perspectiva para el análisis de la inflación en Bolivia, subrayando la necesidad de considerar las fluctuaciones del tipo de cambio y ofreciendo una base sólida para futuras investigaciones y la
formulación de políticas económicas más efectivas.

The voting paradox has been a problem for both the public choice and rational choice schools. A recent attempt to deal with this paradox argues that voting is like applauding at a concert and is therefore expressive rather than rational behavior. This paper argues that such a move fails because: (1) there are many essential differences between voting and clapping; (2) philosophical problems arise from trying to divorce voting from rational behavior; and (3) there are a number of empirical problems with this position. The paper concludes that expressionism approaches the voting paradox from the wrong side. Problems arise not because of what people do when they vote but because the rational choice and public choice schools have a wrong-headed view of rationality.

https://weapedagogy.wordpress.com/2025/02/10/why-marx-should-by-studied/

We read with interest Phillip W. Magness’s article No, Marx Was Not an Important Economist (https://blog.independent.org/2025/01/13/no-marx-was-not-an-important-economist/) and we would like to argue why, according to us, not only knowing the history of economic thought represents an indispensable pillar for the formation of an economist, but also how Marx is not a secondary figure in the history of the discipline.

Austrian economics emphasizes a priori components of social scientific theory. Most emphatically, Ludwig Mises and Murray Rothbard champion praxeology, a methodology often criticized as extremely aprioristic. Among the numerous justifications and interpretations of praxeology to be found in the primary and secondary literature, conventionalism avoids the charge of extreme apriorism by construing the fundamental axiom of praxeology as analytic instead of synthetic. This paper (1) explicates the tentative structure of the fundamental axiom, (2) clarifies some aspects of a conventionalist defense of praxeology, and (3) appraises conventionalist praxeology according to Rothbardian criteria. While Rothbard provides an essentialist justification of praxeology and embraces extreme apriorism, a mildly aprioristic conventionalist defense of praxeology fares better on Rothbard’s own criteria and is much more compatible with other contemporary methodological positions and economic theories.

El carácter abstracto e idealizado de las leyes fundamentales de la física plantea problemas como el siguiente: ¿cómo pueden esas leyes explicar los procesos físicos dentro del dominio de una teoría? Este artículo analiza los procedimientos conceptuales de desidealización, concretización, especialización y aproximación con el objeto de mostrar cómo se pueden mejorar de un modo realista los modelos de una teoría. Se propone una concepción teórico-modelista de la explicación: para explicar un proceso físico se requiere disponer de un modelo desidealizado y concretizado y aplicarlo de forma aproximada al sistema que sufre el proceso. Tales modelos desidealizados proporcionan conceptualizaciones más realistas de los sistemas, mientras que las leyes fundamentales suplementadas con leyes específicas dan cuenta de los procesos.

The literature on philosophy and economics has traditionally been divided into two areas: economic methodology, which connects economics and epistemology/philosophy of science, and the literature on economics and moral philosophy/ethics. Recent developments in both of these areas are discussed in detail. The essential interdependency of philosophical and economic ideas was a prominent feature of classical economics. Adam Smith was the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments as well as Wealth of Nations. John Stuart Mill was an extremely wide-ranging scholar, as well known as the author of A System of Logic as of The Principles of Political Economy. And of course Karl Marx's Capital also drew on intellectual resources from economics, philosophy and a number of other fields. Classical political economy was deeply influenced by philosophy -different philosophies for different economists, but influenced nonetheless -and ideas also flowed freely in the opposite direction: from political economy to various areas of philosophical inquiry. This changed significantly in the first third of the 20th century. The abandonment of 'political economy' and the self-conscious development of 'scientific economics' coincided with a major change in the relationship between the two disciplines. Although philosophy never completely disappeared from economic theorizing, it systematically came to play a less and less obvious role. There are undoubtedly many reasons for this. Two of the more important include the overall professionalization of disciplinary economics and the general acceptance of a more narrow, positivist-inspired notion of legitimate 'scientific' inquiry. John Stuart Mill directed his arguments at the general educated public and wrote confidently about the 'moral sciences'; by the first half of the 20th century fewer economists were doing the former and almost no professional economist would be comfortable doing the latter. Although there were different versions of positivism, one common theme was that 'meaningful' discourse comes in only two forms: the synthetic knowledge of empirical

This article is devoted to explaining and justifying the choice of salient equilibria or focal points in pure coordination games --games in which players have identical preferences over the set of possible outcomes. Focal points, even when they arise as framing effects based on the labelling of options, are intuitively obvious choices, and experimental evidence shows that people often coordinate successfully by choosing them. In response to arguments that focusing is not rationally justified, a qualified justification and psychological explanation is offered in terms of a form of reasoning called the Stackelberg heuristic, which has been used to explain the selection of payoff-dominant (Pareto-optimal) equilibria in common-interest games. Pure coordination games, if appropriately modelled, are shown to be reducible to common-interest games with payoff-dominant equilibria, and it is argued that focusing can therefore be explained by the Stackelberg heuristic.

This review of Yahya Madra’s Late Neoclassical Economics centers on a claim made by mainstream economics to have surpassed the narrow horizon of neoclassical economics, understood as general equilibrium or Walrasian economics, having differentiated into a pluralist field. Through a detailed study of neoclassical economics, Madra distills the misplaced nature of this claim and disputes the propositions that neoclassical economics is nothing but Walrasian and that its new diverse theories belong to the nonneoclassical domain. Rather, the diverse theories of mainstream economics are shown to share with Walrasian economics, and with one another, a common problematic of theoretical humanism in the form of reconciling individual and aggregative/collective rationality in order to achieve a socioeconomic order. This review discussion ends by raising some issues that are absent or latently present in Madra’s book.

The American Protectionist School, which originates with the ideas of Alexander Hamilton and his contemporaries, represents an underappreciated and often poorly understood school of economic thought. The following piece provides an outline of the author’s dissertation entitled ‘American Protectionist Thought: The Economic Philosophy and Theory of the 19th Century American Protectionists’. The main contribution of the dissertation is the rediscovery and reconstruction of the system of economic philosophy and theory developed by the nineteenth-century American Protectionists. In reconstructing this system, the dissertation demonstrates that the American Protectionists represent an original, coherent, and systematic school of economic thought, and one which held its own against other nineteenth-century schools. Central to the doctrine of the American Protectionists is the view of the economy as inventive and dynamic. In expositing this position, the American Protectionists emphasised Man’s ingenuity, the role of invention, and the diversity of talents and aptitudes which exist among individuals. The following outline will touch upon these insights, as well as other insights documented in the dissertation.

John Maynard Keynes is often seen as the quintessential thinker of the short run, calling on us to focus our intellectual and material resources on the present. This poses an intriguing puzzle in light of Keynes's own influential speculations about the future. I use this seeming tension as an opening into Keynes's politics of time, both as a crucial dimension of his political thought and a contribution to debates about political temporality and intertemporal choice. Keynes's insistence on radical uncertainty translated into a skepticism toward intertemporal calculus as not only morally objectionable but also at risk of undermining actual future possibilities. Instead of either myopic presentism or calculated futurity, Keynes advocated bold experimentation in the present to open up new possibilities for an uncertain future. This points to the need to grapple with how to align multiple overlapping time horizons while appreciating the performativity of competing conceptions of the future.

ABSTRACT: The “new dialectic” offers a new interpretation of Marx’s method. Its most sa- lient feature is the emphasis on certain aspects of Hegelian logic for the interpretation of Marx’s writings, especially The Capital. This article systematically presents the “new dialec- tic” argument and the main problems with this approach. The latter derive from the assump- tion that the richness of the concrete is contained in the commodity and can be revealed only through dialectics. This view is deficient because it neglects the influence of historically contingent elements on concrete reality, and its role in Marx’s analysis

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Entre las discusiones vigentes más importantes en la filosofía de la ciencia figura aquella concerniente a la posibilidad de que las ciencias sociales expliquen y predigan, mediante leyes causales, tal y como lo hacen algunas ciencias naturales, en especial la física. Este ensayo busca mostrar (a) que pese a las expectativas, la economía no ha logrado ser la primera de las ciencias sociales en contar con leyes de capacidad explicativa-predictiva creciente y (b) que existe algún acuerdo en cuanto a que lo anterior ocurre porque los economistas han fallado en la definición de términos adecuados para formular las generalizaciones de su investigación empírica. Para alcanzar sus propósitos, el escrito brinda un balance general y un análisis crítico de la evolución del esfuerzo de la teoría económica dominante por asemejarse a las ciencias naturales en cuanto a su método. La revisión de una serie de argumentos provenientes de diferentes áreas del conocimiento permite mostrar cómo la economía habría fracasado en su intento de establecer las unidades de análisis básico con las cuales dar forma a sus teorías.

En què consisteix ser humà i quines han de ser les directrius a emprendre a l'hora d'enfocar la seva educació, foren els nervis a partir dels quals Joan Roura-Parella (Tortellà, 1897-Middletown, EUA 1983), desenvolupà la seva carrera. Després d'una breu introducció històrica, l'article s'endinsarà en la noció de pedagogia a l'interior de les ciències de l'esperit, segons aquest autor, insistint en aquest àmbit espiritual per a tot el que signifiqui desenvolupar unes ciències de l'educació adequades en les societats modernes. A partir d'aquí, es preguntarà críticament sobre la naturalesa d'aquest mateix esperit, un constructe postidealista, que hereta Roura de Dilthey i Spranger, per arribar a una proposta educativa personal per a una vida amb sentit. Finalment, es recorreran uns darrers escrits del pedagog per a preguntar-se sobre quina fou la seva antropologia fonamental, en relació a la de caràcter bíblic, definida per l'apòstol Pau com a esperit, ànima i cos i que Roura identifica amb l'humanisme en contrast amb l'animalisme, on cal cercar una síntesi. La tesi antropològica de Roura no podrà acabar el seu recorregut sense abocar-se sobre l'escatologia, una projecció sobre l'ésser humà més enllà de la vida i de la mort, amb l'esperança de pervivència gràcies a la fe. Paraules clau: pedagogia, antropologia, esperit, escatologia. Summary. What it is to be human and what the guidelines should be when focusing on your education, were the nerves from which Joan Roura-Parella (Tortellà, 1897-Middletown, USA 1983), developed his career After a brief historical introduction, the article will delve into the notion of pedagogy within the sciences of the spirit, according to this author, insisting on this spiritual sphere for all that it means to develop a science of adequate education in modern societies. From here, we will critically question the nature of this same spirit, a post-idealist construct, which Roura inherits from Dilthey and Spranger, to arrive at a personal educational proposal for a meaningful life. Finally, some last writings of the pedagogue will be consulted to ask what his fundamental anthropology was, in relation to that of a biblical nature, defined by the apostle Paul as spirit, soul and body and which Roura identifies with humanism in contrast to animalism, where a synthesis must be sought. Roura's anthropological thesis will not be able to finish its journey without focusing on eschatology, a projection on the human being beyond life and death, with the hope of survival thanks to faith.

In this paper, I discuss an important knowledge gap observed in Greek philosophical research and historiography, which reflects some well-established social circumstances and beliefs: the absence of systematic and extensive research on the theories of ancient Greek female philosophers and their exclusion to some extent from the historical frameworks. This issue shows that nowadays in Greece history is still being misread. It also highlights the need for a new start for research into the contributions of ancient female philosophers, for the historical framework of human intellectual activity of antiquity to be reformed, and for a revision of our cultural and intellectual habitudes. This paper provides a list of ancient Greek women thinkers as a starting point for more in-depth research. I have compiled an extensive list presenting fifty-four women philosophers from classical antiquity, including information about the period and the city they lived in; their field; the philosophical school, community, or academy to which they belong; and other relevant information such as whether their texts have survived.

fue un economista poco convencional. Su metodología de investigación y exposición se distancia abismalmente de la utilizada por la corriente principal en la ciencia económica. El artículo hace una aproximación a la cuestión metodológica en Hirschman. Aunque no se encuentra un tratado escrito por el autor para discutir el tema, sus trabajos son claros ejemplos como abordar metodológicamente los objetos sociales de estudio: esta se sintetiza en partir de la realidad para diagnosticar problemas y proponer soluciones, utilizando la teoría económica y buscando en otras disciplinas la forma de complementar los análisis y recomendaciones. Además su método de exposición se caracteriza por dirigirse a todo público de manera clara y simple.

The paper discusses the relation between experimental economics and the cognitive approach, after having outlined the chief characteristics of the major lines of research in both areas, also with reference to the historical development and to methodological issues. Then the attention is focused on the relevance of the experimental method for the analysis of learning and coordination processes under uncertainty. Finally a few examples will be supplied of the application of the experimental method to cognitive economics.

This paper provides an investment decisionmaking criterion under uncertainty using real options methodology to evaluate if an investment should be made immediately, cautiously, deferred (wait-and-watch), or foregone. We develop a decision-making index d, which is equal to the expectation of net present value (NPV) normalized by its standard deviation. Under a lognormal assumption of the distribution of NPV discounted by riskfree rate, we find the "break-even point" at which the NPV equals the real option value (ROV): d = D * = 0.276. Using the absolute value of D * , one can make sophisticated decisions considering opportunity losses and costs of uncertainty. This new decision index, d, provides a criterion to make investment decisions under uncertainty. When making a decision, a manager only has to observe three parameters: expectation of future cash flow, its uncertainty as measured by its standard deviation, and the magnitude of investment. We discuss examples using this criterion and show its value. The criterion is particularly useful when NPV lies near zero or uncertainty is large.

In his Utilitarianism and Malthus's Virtue Ethics (2014) Sergio Cremaschi argues for a distinctive, theologically based, utilitarianism adopted by Thomas Robert Malthus contrasting with the utilitarianism of the Philosophical Radicals. This paper restates and reinforces the case for a coalescence of the Malthusian and secular utilitarian perspectives primarily on the following grounds. In an effort to reconcile theology and welfare, Malthus effectively undermined the former by radically reinterpreting the scriptures to justify a reduced birth rate. His transition in the 1820s to the Ricardian vision of industrial development turned on perceived changes in the empirical and legislative environment with no theological input whatsoever. Moreover, while Malthus at times perceived virtue divorced from consequences for happiness, so too did Ricardo and J.S. Mill, even when at odds with the wealth and happiness components of the utilitarian maximand.

Homo Economicus or economic man, which is the main postulate of classical and neo-classical theories indicate a rational person who makes decisions and pursues wealth for his self-interest. But, human-being is not a rational agent all the time. Because most of the time, some other factors determine human behavior than rationality. These could be repetition, imitation, or social norms. Therefore; behavioral economics, having introduced a distinctive perspective to economics, argues that people cannot make rational decisions and can be rational only to a limited extent in their decision. This study aims to present a historical perspective in molding the Homo Economicus in the Economics Discipline.

Primeiramente, gostaria de agradecer ao meu orientador e professor João L. Pondé, não apenas pela força nessa reta final de curso, como também por ter me aberto as portas de forma tão positiva para esse fascinante campo da economia: a metodologia econômica. Agradeço também a todos os responsáveis pela minha formação intelectual, desde os professores da Escola Suíço-Brasileira até o corpo docente do Instituto de Economia da UFRJ, passando, como não podia deixar de ser, por todo o departamento de biocombustíveis do BNDES. Onde passei sempre tive a sorte de encontrar quem me transmitisse confiança, de forma sempre sincera e carinhosa. Por isso, serei eternamente grato. Meus amigos serão sempre um capítulo à parte. O apoio nas horas mais complicadas e os momentos de alegria e diversão foram imprescindíveis. Posso dizer com orgulho e segurança que poucas pessoas têm tão bons amigos quanto os meus. Citar nomes é desnecessário. Por último, e em especial, à minha família. Minha mãe, meu pai e meu irmão são acima de tudo e todos os principais suportes, influências e motivos. São simplesmente tudo o que se espera de uma família. À Tante Carmen, pelo eterno apoio. Com cada passo em frente que damos, com cada problema que resolvemos, descobrimos não só novos problemas não resolvidos, como constatamos também que quando julgávamos pisar terreno firme e seguro, tudo é de fato incerto e vacilante.

Starting from David Ricardo in 1817, the historian of economic thought searches in vain through the theorizing of financial-sector spokesmen for an acknowledgement of how debt charges (1) add a non-production cost to prices, (2) deflate markets of purchasing power that otherwise would be spent on goods and services, (3) discourage capital investment and employment to supply these markets, and hence (4) put downward pressure on wages. What needs to be explained is why government, academia, industry and labor have not taken the lead in analyzing these problems. Why have the corrosive dynamics of debt been all but ignored? I suppose one would not expect the tobacco industry to promote studies of the unhealthy consequences of smoking, any more than the oil and automobile industries would encourage research into environmental pollution or the linkage between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. So it should come as little surprise that the adverse effects of debt are sidestepped by advocates of the idea that financial institutions rather than government planners should manage society's development. Claiming that good public planning and effective regulation of markets is impossible, monetarists have been silent with regard to how financial interests shape the economy to favor debt proliferation. The problem is that governments throughout the world leave monetary policy to the Central Bank and Treasury, whose administrators are drawn from the ranks of bankers and money managers. Backed by the IMF with its doctrinaire Chicago School advocacy of financial austerity, these planners oppose full-employment policies and rising living standards as being inflationary. The fear is that rising wages will increase prices, reducing the volume of labor and output that a given flow of debt service is able to command. theoretical exposition, and it was not noted clearly by his followers in Britain, the United States or other countries. In a 1934 article Keynes noted that anyone who did not accept the idea that economies adjusted automatically to any external disturbance -in particular to debt problems -was labeled a crank. He placed himself in their ranks, and his General Theory acknowledged the writings of the Swiss-German economist Silvio Gesell as representative of this approach. On the other hand, he noted: "The strength of the self-adjusting school depends on its having behind it almost the whole body of organised economic thinking and doctrine of the last hundred years. This is a formidable power. . . . It has vast prestige and a more far-reaching influence than is obvious. For it lies behind the education and the habitual modes of thought, not only of economists, but of bankers and businessmen and civil servants and politicians of all parties." 6 Keynes acknowledged that he still had one foot in the orthodox tradition. In the end, all he could do was blame economists for not having developed "a satisfactory theory of the rate of interest" to serve as the regulator of saving, investment and employment. But how could this be done, without tracing the effect of interest rates on the doubling times of debts, the economy's ability to pay, and the structural consequences of forfeiture under distress conditions? How debt and interest rates are autonomous from the "real" economy Keynes was not the first economist pointing to savings as not being an unalloyed benefit. Marx had described how the "new aristocracy of finance, a new sort of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and merely nominal directors . . . demands . . . precisely that others shall save for him" (Capital III:519f.). The saving in this case take the form of debt repayment with interest, much as British money lenders advertise that buying a home helps buyers save by building up equity via their mortgage payments each month. The liquid savings of course accrue to the lenders, not the debtors. But it was mainly fringe groups that warned of the collision course between the debt overhead and the "real" economy's production and consumption trends.

Computation and Simulation have always played a role in economics -whether it be pure economic theory or any variant of applied, especially policy-oriented, macro-and microeconomics or what has increasingly come to be called empirical or experimental economics. Computations and simulations are also intrinsically dynamic. This triptychcomputation, simulation and dynamic -is given natural foundations, mainly as a result of developments in the mathematics underpinnings in the potentials of computing, using digital technology. A running theme in this essay is the recognition that, increasingly, the development of economic theory seems to go hand in hand with advances in the theory and practice of computing, which is, in turn, a catalyst for the move away from too much reliance on any kind of mathematics for the formalisation of economic entities that is inconsistent with the mathematical, methodological and epistemological foundations of the theory of computation.

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In discussing rational choice theory (RCT) as an explanation of demand behavior, Becker (1962, Journal of Political Economy, 70, 1 -13) proposed a model of random choice in which consumers pick a bundle on their budget line according to a uniform distribution. This model has then been used in various ways to assess the validity of RCT and to support as-if arguments in defense of it. This paper makes both historical and methodological contributions. Historically, it investigates how the interpretation of Becker random behavior evolved between the original 1962 article and the modern experimental literature on individual demand, and surveys six experiments in which it has been used as an alternative hypothesis to RCT. Methodologically, this paper conducts an assessment of the as-if defense of RCT from the standpoint of Becker's model. It argues that this defense is 'weak' in a number of senses, and that it has negatively influenced the design of experiments about RCT.

Demands for pluralism in economics education have been widespread in recent years. As change in the universities is slow and piecemeal, we present a comparative approach to economics which builds the intellectual basis for the online learning platform Exploring Economics (www.exploring-economics.org). This approach is committed to a vision of theoretical and methodological pluralism and is grounded in concepts derived from biology, the history of economic thought, the philosophy of science and international political economy. We find central categories in which the ten schools of economic thought selected show meta-theoretical patterns which may not only serve as a guide to economics education but may also be relevant for economics research.

¿Cuáles son las contribuciones de Hayek a la epistemología? ¿En qué consisten sus aportes a la epistemología de la economía? ¿Tiene la Escuela Austríaca algo para decir sobre el debate del realismo de los modelos económicos?
La posibilidad de que la teoría de mercado como proceso sea entendida como modelo nos invita a preguntarnos por el realismo subyacente  de esa propuesta y su fundamento filosófico. Los modelos como bocetos y metáforas son un intento por capturar con verdad algo de la complejidad y profundidad de la realidad.
¿Es posible hablar de modelos y Escuela Austríaca? A través de Friedman, Musgrave y Maki, y recorriendo la epistemología de Hayek mostramos su acercamiento al debate sobre el realismo de los modelos económicos y abrimos a la consideración de los fundamentos  filosóficos de tales construcciones en economía. La Escuela Austríaca se aproxima, entonces, a las discusiones de epistemología de la economía de la academia y ofrece fundamentos filosóficos que enriquecen el debate.