Questions tagged [philosophy-of-economics]
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Which Spanish scholastic economist said that economies could not be controlled even if one could track every transaction?
Which Spanish scholastic economist said that economies could not be controlled even if one could track every transaction?
I think the context was an argument against Keynesian economics, Cartesian ...
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Frameworks and models in economics
A framework is not a model of a specific system,
but a way of formulating and studying a
variety of systems. Classical mechanics,
quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics are all really frameworks. ...
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Reductionism vs emergentism in economics
Is economics reductionism or emergentism ?Reductionism is the idea that knowledge at a higher level can be deduced from the entities and their interaction at a lower level.Emergentism rejects ...
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Market failure in the provision of facilities for people with disabilities
In the US, I believe it is a statutory requirement that all places are accessible for people with disabilities. However, if it were not for this statutory requirement, I would imagine that accessible ...
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Who first promoted the idea that competition leads to a better economy?
Who first promoted the the idea that competition leads to a better economy?
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Weather forecasting vs. macroeconomic forecasting
It is common to say that the behavior of a national economy is complicated because it involves millions of individuals ($10^8$) each of whom makes thousands of relevant economic decisions a year ($10^...
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The Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Mathematics in Economics
In 1960, the physicist Eugene Wigner wrote the article "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" explaining how unexpected it is that mathematical formalism can ...
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Who is Hayek referring to in this statement about taxonomy in economics?
In Hayek's essay, 'The Facts of the Social Sciences,' he mentioned "that one of the best-known modern critics of the discipline has described [economics] as a purely taxonomic science."
Who ...
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Looking for a paper on game theory as a beautiful thing, not needing immediate purpose
I am looking for a paper I am sure to have read a while ago, but cannot recall its title. The message was that we should not judge game theory (or economic theory in general?) by its ability as an &...
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Is the market price objective?
Is the market price objective, does it exist independently of human consciousness, how do we treat the market price in economics and the philosophy of economics?
The market price is the current price ...
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What is the main reason behind the study of Neo-classical economics, instead of behavioural economics?
In the courses, we are taught economics theoretically,inclusive of assumptions,simplicity and inferences based on the optimal thinking. But, later on we see that most of the theories and hypothesis ...
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How *should* weigh income/consumption at different income levels (esp. to the very poor vs poor) ... perhaps in a 'social welfare function'?
What is the best analysis/literature/text, that gives a theoretical justification for approaches that can be used in practice, for
How we should weight income/consumption at different income levels (...
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How is economics even a science, rather than just politics?
"Take from the rich and give to the poor," says the Left-wing politician who stands to benefit from the votes of poor voters they bribe with government benefits. "Take from noone, and ...
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What are the best theoretical or empirical defenses of equilibrium analysis in economics?
An Anarchist FAQ (see Wikipedia page here) focuses its opposition to mainstream economics by criticizing equilibrium analysis. The FAQ notes that,
[Equilibrium analysis] is essentially a static tool ...
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Economics' position in the hierarchy of sciences (hard vs soft)
As a student of Economics, I often listen to the claim that Economics is a "soft science" and that its results may not be too reliable etc. The explanations are often based on personal ...
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Is there any goal of Economics? [closed]
As I understand every subject has some goals for example in physics one particular goal is to have a unified field theory. Is there any one or more goals of economics. I was expecting the goals should ...
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What is the point of considering only pure strategies in a game? How could you restrict people from thinking about mixed strategy?
In an experimental setting, how could you effectively incentivize the subjects to not to adopt mixed strategy?
I would like to re-emphasize that the question in concern is "how to prevent people ...
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What is the observable definition of "preference" by Frisch?
To make things weird, although Frisch was fully aware of the importance of random distribution in economics relations, he never mention the randomness in binary preference relations!
How to define ...
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Economy with constant amount of money
A thought experiment: (Based on my understanding of economics)
Suppose we are guaranteed that no natural calamity/war/pandemic happens for one year (from year $0$ to year $1$) in the world. Then the ...
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Are revealed preferences normative or positive notion?
I always thought from my understanding of the terms normative and positive that revealed preferences are a positive concept. For example, saying Anakin prefers grass to sand (i.e. $U(g)\succ U(s)$) is ...
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What justifies the authority of a bank to create money when they make loans?
This is somewhat of a political or philosophical question.
As explained by the Bank of England and elsewhere, the majority of broad money is created by credit to banks' accounts when they make loans. ...
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Big research goals in economics?
Are there any big, overarching research goals in economics?
Examples from other fields that come to my mind:
Mathematics: Millenium problems, Hilbert's problems, Collatz conjecture, ...
Computer ...
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Understanding Classical Rationality at a Basic Level
I am a high school student in an intro Microeconomics class (note that we have not covered utility functions) and I'm utterly confused about the classical concept of rationality. I certainly ...
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Non-axiomatic definition of well-being
I first wanted to ask this on philosophy@SE but, on a second thought, decided this might be a better place.
If we defined a general policy's objective being "to maximize well being and minimize ...
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Zero-sum games being converted into positive-sum games
It seems as if "pure, naked self-interest", that is, self-interest without liberty, results often in a zero-sum game. (I'm using the term liberty in a Lockean sense, where it is taken to mean the ...
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What is economics?
It has been disturbing me since the first year of college that the meaning of economic is express too much as it is too less. "Study of scarcity, utilize the limited resources to satisfy unlimited ...
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Philosophy books for decision theory and economics idea
I have learned economics so far, the most astonishing economics' thing is its though which is talkable and visually in the real world or the abstract world that is worth researching and talking. What ...
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How did economics become a "science", an academic field?
How did economics become a "science", an academic field?
Because I think of it as a soft science and thus in order to be considered a science it would need to be able to reply to the hard sciences? ...
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Arrow of time and irreversibility in Economics
In physics there is the concept of arrow of time, which states that time only evolves in one direction (forward), and that this should be visible in the material world. As the Wikipedia article states ...
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McCloskey's example of fungibility in basketball
To illustrate the concept of fungibility, Deirdre McCloskey (1985, p. 7, PDF) gives an example from basketball.
She claims that the last two points scored are no more important than any two points ...
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Which are some proven methods to compare alternative economic theories?
Based on this question about alternative schools of thought, this question about untested economic theories, and the rather unsatisfactory answer (imo) to this question about which is the "most ...
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Which are the different Schools of Economic Thought?
It would be great to have a brief but comprehensive list of current (e.g. Austrian) and defunct (e.g Mercantilism) schools of thought in Economics. I think an ideal answer would include:
the defining ...
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Where does capital come from?
Sorry if this is a birds and the bees type question. Where does capital come from? And I am not talking human capital (which to my mind is skills basically). I suppose I'm taking about financial ...
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