Tag Archives: economics as science

The debate goes on.Lars P. Syll’s BlogIs economics — really — a science?Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Longish and detained, but worth a read if you are following this debate.Lars P. Syll’s BlogDani Rodrik’s Ten CommandmentsLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Why economics is not a science and how it is being used prescriptively rather than descriptively.Adam Smith's Lost Legacy More Criticism Of Mathematical Economic Theorising Gavin Kennedy | Professor Emeritus, Heriot Watt University

On Friday all the researchers in the new Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence(ESCoE) met at its home in the National Institute to catch up on the range of projects and it was terrific to hear about the progress and challenges across the entire span of the research programme. One of the projects is concerned with measuring uncertainty in economic statistics and communicating that uncertainty. The discussion sent me back to Oskar Morgenstern’s 1950 On the Accuracy of Economic...

One of the features of mainstream economics today is the huge diversity of models that are around. Academic prestige tends to come to those who add to that number. But how do you decide which model to use when investigating a particular problem? The answer is by looking at evidence about applicability. That is not a trivial task because of the probabilistic and diverse nature of economic evidence, and Dani Rodrik describes that process as more of a craft than a science.... Mainly...

Robert Solow destroys economics as a hard science. Of course, he is not alone in this. Heterodox economists have been pointing this out for a long time, and so have observers from other disciplines looking in. And this is not the only reason. For example, key terms are poorly specified as shown by the Cambridge capital controversy that Solow was involved in with Samuelson on the losing side. Business schools figure this out some time ago and switched to the case method.Lars P. Syll’s...