by The vanity of rigour in economics Reasoning is the process whereby we get from old truths to new truths, from the known to the unknown, from the accepted to the debatable … If the reasoning starts on firm ground, and if it is itself sound, then it will lead to a conclusion which we must accept, though previously, perhaps, we had not thought we should. And those are the conditions that a good argument must meet; true premises and a good inference. If either of those conditions is not met, you can’t say whether you’ve got a true conclusion or not. Mainstream economic theory today is in the story-telling business whereby economic theorists create make-believe analogue models of the target system – usually conceived as the real economic system. This modeling activity is considered useful and essential. And it’s used both in micro- and macroeconomics. Since everything the economist wants to know is put in to the model, it’s a piece of cake to prove whatever in a ‘rigorous’ and valid way. Deductive certainty is achieved — in the model. Unfortunately, the price one has to pay for getting at ‘rigorous’ and precise results in this way, is making outright ridiculous assumptions that actually impair the possibility of having anything of interest to say about the real world.
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The vanity of rigour in economics
Reasoning is the process whereby we get from old truths to new truths, from the known to the unknown, from the accepted to the debatable … If the reasoning starts on firm ground, and if it is itself sound, then it will lead to a conclusion which we must accept, though previously, perhaps, we had not thought we should. And those are the conditions that a good argument must meet; true premises and a good inference. If either of those conditions is not met, you can’t say whether you’ve got a true conclusion or not.
Mainstream economic theory today is in the story-telling business whereby economic theorists create make-believe analogue models of the target system – usually conceived as the real economic system. This modeling activity is considered useful and essential. And it’s used both in micro- and macroeconomics. Since everything the economist wants to know is put in to the model, it’s a piece of cake to prove whatever in a ‘rigorous’ and valid way. Deductive certainty is achieved — in the model. Unfortunately, the price one has to pay for getting at ‘rigorous’ and precise results in this way, is making outright ridiculous assumptions that actually impair the possibility of having anything of interest to say about the real world.
Since fully-fledged experiments on a societal scale as a rule are prohibitively expensive, ethically indefensible or unmanageable, economic theorists have to go for something else. To understand and explain relations between different entities in the real economy the predominant strategy is to build models — the preferred stand-in for real experiments — and make things happen in these ‘analogue-economy models’ rather than engineering things happening in real economies.
Mainstream economics has since long given up on the real world and contents itself with proving things about thought up worlds. Empirical evidence only plays a minor role in economic theory, where models largely function as a substitute for empirical evidence. The one-sided, almost religious, insistence on axiomatic-deductivist modeling as the only scientific activity worthy of pursuing in economics, is a scientific cul-de-sac.
Avoiding logical inconsistencies is crucial in all science. But it is not enough. Just as important is avoiding factual inconsistencies. And without showing — or at least warrantedly arguing — that the assumptions and premises of their models are in fact true, mainstream economists aren’t really reasoning, but only playing games. Formalistic deductive ‘Glasperlenspiel’ can be very impressive and seductive. But in the realm of science it ought to be considered of little or no value to simply make claims about the model and lose sight of reality.