Archive for the ‘Philosophy of economics’ Category
Marx and the lions
Last Friday, I saw « Marx reloaded » in a smallish, convivial cinema room at ICA in London. A thought-provoking documentary, starting straight from the right questions: now that we are facing the worst economic and financial crisis in 70 years, are we still sure our way of organising production and exchange is the best available? Alternatives […]
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Tags: Economic analysis, Economic crisis, economic development, Economic governance, Emerging countries, Globalisation, History of economics, Political theory, social theory, Sociology
Do economists, as a professional community, behave like sheep -all following the sheepdog? Or like fish, moving altogether in schools? However bizarre these analogies might seem at first sight, they have been applied successfully to finance, where the concept of “herding behaviour” denotes cases in which a majority of traders adopt a shared, or very similar, pathway. It […]
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Tags: Economic analysis, economic methodology, Economic profession, Economists, Sociology, Sociology of economics
Of all the economic bubbles … few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself. So wrote The Economist in July 2009, commenting on the financial crisis. In the last few years, many have pointed their fingers at the discipline and its incapacity to predict the crisis, let alone to devise remedies for […]
Filed under: Economic theory, Philosophy of economics, Social science methodology | 1 Comment
Tags: Economic analysis, economic methodology, History of economics, Qualitative data, Quantitative methods, Social science data, Statistical modeling, Trans-disciplinarity
Would you believe that one would invest years of time and energy to study an older economics writer in the hope to get the Nobel Prize? Well, that sounds pretty unlikely… Everyone in the history of economics community complains that the field is so disregarded these days. The Nobel prize, don’t even think about it. […]
Filed under: Consumer behaviour, Economic theory, Philosophy of economics | Leave a Comment
Tags: Behavioral economics, Consumer choice, Consumer demand, Economic analysis, economic methodology, Experimental economics, History of economics
Randomness in consumer choice
Would it be reasonable for a social scientist to study human behaviours and interactions under the assumption that people make choices at random –that is, they just pick up an option from a given probability distribution? Few social scientists would go as far as to think this could be a realistic representation of how we […]
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Tags: Consumer choice, Consumer demand, Economic analysis, economic methodology, Experimental economics, History of economics, Random choice, Rational choice
Having just reviewed “Poor Economics“, a new book by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (high on my reading list…), The Economist is hosting a debate inviting prominent economists to discuss the question of whether randomised trials can be regarded as the future of economics. The debate is definitely interesting and the viewpoints expressed quite relevant. […]
Filed under: Philosophy of economics, Social networks, Social science methodology | Leave a Comment
Tags: Economic analysis, economic development, economic methodology, Network Analysis, poverty alleviation, Quantitative methods, randomized trials, Social science data
In the media and public opinion, economics is not immediately related to the personal, intimate sphere. Economics has to do with competition, inflation, unemployment, crisis. Or so the saying goes. However, a closer look reveals that the discipline has by and large moved away from its traditionally narrow focus to encompass a much wider range […]
Filed under: Economic sociology, Economic theory, Philosophy of economics, Social science methodology, Socioeconomic studies of health | Leave a Comment
Tags: Behavioral economics, Economic analysis, History of economics, social theory, Trans-disciplinarity
Today, the history of economic thought is attracting renewed attention from public opinion and the media. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, many are dusting off Keynes and the forms of government intervention he inspired in the 1950s-60s. Do they offer lessons that could still be valuable today, as faith in the virtues of […]
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Tags: Economic analysis, economic methodology, History of economics, Public policy analysis
Interface 4
Just come back from the 4th edition of the “Interface between economic theory and history of theories” workshop. It all started with an initiative by Michel De Vroey in Louvain in 2007, I then contributed to making it a regular event by organising the 2nd edition in Paris two years ago. This year, the event […]
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Tags: Economic analysis, economic methodology, History of economics
A new blog post by Martin Ravallion of the World Bank proposes a new way in which research done there may support developing countries. Instead of a traditional “retailing model” under which researchers investigate a specific issue in a given setting and period of time, and produce findings for use in that context, he promotes […]
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Tags: Economic analysis, economic development, economic methodology, Open access to scientific publications, Public policy analysis, Social science data, social theory
