Journal of Economic Methodology最新文献

{"title":"Introduction to the INEM 2021 conference special issue","authors":"Malte Dold, C. Tyler DesRoches, Merve Burnazoglu","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2023.2268629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2023.2268629","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"55 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134909005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ontological wars in economics: the return of supervenience","authors":"Alexandre Müller Fonseca","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2023.2271932","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2023.2271932","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTIn this article, I contest Brian Epstein’s argument (2014) against the applicability of global supervenience to relate micro and macroeconomic properties. Epstein rejects supervenience via a causal-chain relation inside the macroeconomic set in his criticism. Accordingly, the rise of the macro set is fixed by a weather event without any mediation from the realm of microeconomics. As it stands, this idea would demonstrate the autonomy of macroeconomics from microeconomics. However, as I intend to argue, in Epstein’s weather-cases scenarios, the corresponding macroeconomic sets are fixed by their micro bases that codify weather events and thereby fix the macro. This is so because the microeconomic base must include institutional facts; they are as much necessary as the facts about people’s conditions. In so doing, we re-establish bottom–top determination from the micro to the macro, rescuing the applicability of global supervenience.KEYWORDS: Supervenience; global supervenience; Kevin Hoover; Brian Epstein; ontology of economics AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Julie Zahle, Matthew Tugby, Nancy Cartwright, and Pedro Garcia Duarte for helpful feedbacks on previous versions of the manuscript. I also must thank both referees for their valuable comments.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 See McLaughlin and Bennett (Citation2021).2 Usually, the supervenience’ relata are facts or properties. The concept is not normally employed to relate representational items such as theories or their fragments. Butterfield (Citation2011) has applied the concept to relate different scales of physical theories. In this article, I take as the primary relata of supervenience sets as facts/properties. Along the exposition, these two possible relata are employed interchangeably.3 Peter Kivy (Citation1987) defends a Platonist view of musical works: they are abstract objects (universals, types, or kinds) identical to their sound structures. Their performances are particulars, tokens, or instances. The Platonist view of music is the dominant interpretation about the ontology of music, but there are other interpretations. For an overview, see Kania (Citation2017).4 In The Jazz of Physics, the physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander (Citation2016) argues that several symmetries that plays a significant role in quantum mechanics are musically represented in Coltrane’s songs.5 See, Walton (Citation1970).6 Hoover himself did not offer details about emergence. On my view, Hoover bears in mind a weak notion of emergence. Wilson (Citation2021) states two criteria for weak emergence. First, a token higher-level property H is weakly metaphysically emergent from token lower-level property L on a given occasion when (i) H and L are synchronically related and (ii) H has a non-empty proper subset of the token powers had by L. Condition (i) specifies synchronic dependence while (ii) captures a weak sense where an emerg","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"66 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135267850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The genetic lottery why DNA matters for social equality <b>The genetic lottery why DNA matters for social equality</b> , by Kathryn Paige Harden, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2021, 312 pp., $29.95/£25.00, ISBN: 9780691226705","authors":"Jonathan M. Kaplan","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2023.2266666","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2023.2266666","url":null,"abstract":"Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1 In human behavior genetics, heritability is usually calculated by comparing the similarity of monozygotic (identical) twins to that of dizygotic (“fraternal”) same-sex twins, under the assumption that such sets of twins will have experienced (roughly) the same developmental environments, and so any excess similarity in identical twins must be associated with their excess genetic similarity. For a critique of this methodology and the assumptions underlying it, see e.g. Joseph, Citation2014. While I am skeptical of the accuracy of heritability estimates in human behavioral traits (see Matthews & Turkheimer, Citation2022 for a review of some of the ways in which heritability estimates can be inaccurate), my own view is that the concept’s fundamental limitations usually make arguments about its accuracy moot (see Kaplan, Citation2006, for discussion).2 I want to note that I am not endorsing such a policy – while I would like to be in a society in which everyone remotely capable of doing so and with any desire to do so be able to attend and graduate from college without incurring unreasonable costs, I don’t think it is imperative that everyone capable of doing so in fact want to do so, and would hope that any reasonably just society would create / hold space (meaningful, well-paid work) for people for whom pursuing a college education was not attractive.3 Though again, Harden overstates her case. The evidence suggests that children who are more genetically similar to children who engage in early sexual behavior (within a particular social context, etc.) are also more likely to be similar in terms of adverse outcomes, but the move from there to “genes that accelerate reproductive development” is a stretch, at best.4 I resist citing this “paper” as doing so risks legitimizing it and the “journal” in which it appears – readers interested in reading this “paper” will I trust have no trouble locating it.","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135141197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A contribution to scientific studies of norms in economics inspired by JN Keynes and popper","authors":"Sina Badiei","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2023.2267075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2023.2267075","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis paper defends JN Keynes’s argument that normative economics can be objective. It begins by exploring Keynes’s view on the positive/normative distinction in economics. After discussing its originality and advantages, the paper recognizes that the Keynesian distinction does not explain the exact nature of the relationship between positive and normative economics. Thus, it tries to improve Keynes’s position using Popper’s contributions to economics. It shows that for Popper, advances in normative social science are the main steppingstone to resolving disagreements over the choice of the norms underlying the reform of social situations. The final two parts of the paper draw on the contributions of Keynes and Popper to the study of norms to explain why normative economics can more easily approach objectivity by concentrating on highly delimited topics. The last part relies on Popper’s concept of avoidable unhappiness to offer one method of restraining the tasks of normative economics.KEYWORDS: Positive economicsnormative economicsnorms and valuesepistemology of economicsphilosophy of economicsbasic needs AcknowledgementI want to express my gratitude to John Davis, Wade Hands and Élodie Bertrand for their invaluable comments on previous versions of this paper, and the editors of INEM 2021 Special Issue, Malte Dold, Merve Bornazoglu and Tyler Desroches, for their help and consideration. Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge the immensely helpful comments and suggestions of two anonymous referees, which allowed me to improve the paper considerably. It goes without saying that I am responsible for any remaining shortcoming.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Hands (Citation2012) has argued in favor of distinguishing epistemic values that influence scientific work from non-epistemic norms that influence the actions of socio-economic agents in general (Citation2012, pp. 220–221). This article's focus is on non-epistemic, i.e., social and ethical norms, and it often follows Hands by distinguishing epistemic values from non-epistemic norms.2 Keynes's book is much more than a mere epistemological and methodological restatement of Marshall's economics, as proven by Marshall's not-very-enthusiastic comments on the book and Keynes's characterization of Marshall's views as ‘nearly always exaggerated on one side or the other’ (Deane, Citation2001, p. 138).3 For example, suppose we have a choice between two policies, A and B. Policy A allows the wealthiest person to gain the sum of x. After compensating the losers, he still gains the sum of y relative to the initial situation. Policy B allows the poorest person to gain the sum of x. After compensating the loser, who happens to be the richest person, she still gains the sum of y relative to the initial situation. Paretian welfare economics offers no guidance as to which of these policies should be adopted, leaving the decision to politician","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135900873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Models on trial: antitrust experts face <i>Daubert</i> challenges","authors":"Edoardo Peruzzi","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2023.2267052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2023.2267052","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTEconomists are often called upon as expert witnesses by the parties involved in antitrust litigation. One challenge they may face in US federal courts is compliance with the Daubert standard of admissibility of expert testimony. The interplay between model applicability and the Daubert standard is analyzed, suggesting the importance of distinguishing between weak applicability claims, those that state that a model’s critical assumptions are shared by the target, and strong applicability claims, those that connect empirical models and quantitative market features. Recent antitrust cases in which expert testimonies based on economic models have been assessed following the Daubert standard are examined using this framework. Some normative implications are drawn concerning how to improve judges’ assessment of model-based arguments.KEYWORDS: Modelsantitrust lawDaubertmodel applicabilityexpert testimonyJEL CLASSIFICATION: B41K21L41L44 AcknowledgementsI wish to thank Nicola Giocoli, Emrah N. Aydinonat, Uskali Mäki, Steven G. Medema, Kevin D. Hoover, as well as two anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments and suggestions. This work has been presented in seminars at the TINT Centre for Philosophy of Social Science, University of Helsinki, and Center for the History of Political Economy, Duke University. I thank the organizers and all participants for lively discussions and useful remarks.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 In addition to antitrust law, other legal areas where economic reasoning finds an eminent place are securities regulation, employment discrimination, and patent infringement (see Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, Citation2020; Maas & Svorenčík, Citation2017).2 The name originates from Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm. Inc., 509 US 579 (1993). See below, Section 2.3 Rule 702 – Testimony by Expert Witness. Retrieved from: https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_702.4 These findings should however be taken with a certain degree of caution for it is extremely hard to build a dataset containing all and only Daubert-related challenges (see Langenfeld & Alexander, Citation2011, Appendix).5 The Daubert Tracker website reports that economics ranks fourth among the most challenged discipline under Daubert/Rule 702 after medicine, engineering, and psychology. See www.dauberttracker.com (accessed May 15, 2023).6 Merger simulation has been introduced as a methodology for antitrust enforcement in the mid-1990s and it is now considered a standard tool by antitrust authorities. For a survey on merger simulation, see Budzinski and Ruhmer (Citation2010).7 Stanford economist Robert Hall saw his testimony rejected in Concord Boat Corp v. Brunswick (207 F.3d 1039, 8th Cir., 2000) because the Cournot model proposed to describe the relevant market did not fit economic realities (see Werden et al., Citation2004, p. 89). Three years later, a federal judge excluded the plaintiff’s expert following a Daube","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135901385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"C <b>an heterodox economics make a difference? Conversations with key thinkers</b> C <b>an heterodox economics make a difference? Conversations with key thinkers</b> , by Phil Armstrong, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2020, 528 pp., £140.00 (hardback) ISBN: 978 1 80037 088 3","authors":"Danielle Guizzo","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2023.2258619","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2023.2258619","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136060423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Permissible preference purification: on context-dependent choices and decisive welfare judgements in behavioural welfare economics","authors":"Måns Abrahamson","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2023.2257212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2023.2257212","url":null,"abstract":"Behavioural welfare economics has lately been challenged on account of its use of the satisfaction of true preferences as a normative criterion. The critique contests what is taken to be an implicit assumption in the literature, namely that true preferences are context-independent. This assumption is considered not only unjustified in the behavioural welfare economics literature but unjustifiable – true preferences are argued to be, at least sometimes, context-dependent. This article explores the implications of this ‘critique of the inner rational agent’. I argue that the critique does not support a wholesale shift away from the use of true preferences as an evaluative standard in normative economics; instead, the critique implies that behavioural welfare economists need to inquire into and establish the ‘source’ of particular context-dependent choices in individuals’ decision-making. The source determines the permissibility of correcting individuals’ context-dependent choices and can, in some situations, support decisive welfare judgements.","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135397252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Medical epistemology meets economics: how (not) to GRADE universal basic income research","authors":"K. Hayakawa, A. K. Yee","doi":"10.1080/1350178X.2023.2231480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2023.2231480","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT There have recently been novel applications of medical systematic review guidelines to economic policy interventions which contain controversial methodological assumptions that require further scrutiny. A landmark 2017 Cochrane review of unconditional cash transfer (UCT) studies, based on the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE), exemplifies both the possibilities and limitations of applying medical systematic review guidelines to UCT and universal basic income (UBI) studies. Recognizing the need to upgrade GRADE to incorporate the differences between medical and policy interventions, the GRADE Public Health Project Group (PHPG) was convened to enumerate and address these methodological challenges. However, in light of our analysis of additional methodological challenges that arise for UCT and UBI studies, we argue that the adaptation of medical systematic review guidelines to economic methodology is far from straightforward and is in fact more challenging than claimed by the PHPG.","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"52 1","pages":"245 - 264"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81879627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Definitions in economics: farewell to essentialism","authors":"Cristian Frasser, G. Guzmán","doi":"10.1080/1350178X.2023.2225171","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2023.2225171","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT There is an essentialist view that requires one to specify the set of necessary and sufficient properties of the things that exist when establishing definitions. The endorsement of essentialism for definitions in economics has been largely motivated by the Taxonomic Tower of Babel (TTB), which encompasses two intellectual fears. The fear of scientific aphasia is the fear that scientific progress is hampered because economists do not agree on the definitions they use. The fear of nihilism refers to the fear of the advent of an unmanageable proliferation of definitions of the same term. We advocate the abandonment of essentialism by offering three arguments. First, essentialism seems impracticable in economics because essences are either mostly unavailable or useless. Second, the TTB, rather than a bug, is a feature of economics. Third, the TTB does not necessarily display the negative implications presumably associated with its existence.","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"64 1","pages":"228 - 244"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91288071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Adam Smith reconsidered: history, liberty, and the foundations of modern politics","authors":"Erwin Dekker","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2023.2223428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2023.2223428","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"115 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75785697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}