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  1. When the “realism of assumptions” mattered: Milton Friedman's critique of the Phillips curve.Marcos Picchio - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 94 (C):8-16.
    In this paper I challenge the pernicious aspects of Milton Friedman's methodological outlook that continues to hold sway over mainstream neoclassical economists. I do this by showing how Friedman's own methodological dicta could have been used against him when he famously advanced the expectations critique of the Phillips curve at his presidential address to the American Economic Association. I use this case study to further suggest that psychological and neurophysiological data should not be deemed irrelevant to economic science.
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  2. Revisiting Friedman’s “On the methodology of positive economics” (“F53”).Paul Hoyningen-Huene - 2021 - Methodus 10 (2):146-182.
    In this paper, I shall defend two main claims. First, Friedman’s famous paper “On the methodology of positive economics” (“F53”) cannot be properly understood without taking into account the influence of three authors who are neither cited nor mentioned in the paper: Max Weber, Frank Knight, and Karl Popper. I shall trace both their substantive influence on F53 and the historical route by which this influence took place. Once one has understood these ingredients, especially Weber’s ideal types, many of F53’s (...)
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  3. Energy security issues in contemporary Europe.Josef Abrhám, Igor Britchenko, Marija Jankovic & Kristina Garškaitė-Milvydienė - 2018 - Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues 7 (3):388-398.
    Throughout the history of mankind, energy security has been always seen as a means of protection from disruptions of essential energy systems. The idea of protection from disorders emerged from the process of securing political and military control over energy resources to set up policies and measures on managing risks that affect all elements of energy systems. The various systems placed in a place to achieve energy security are the driving force towards the energy innovations or emerging trends in the (...)
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  4. Preferences and Positivist Methodology in Economics.Christopher Clarke - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (2):192-212.
    I distinguish several doctrines that economic methodologists have found attractive, all of which have a positivist flavour. One of these is the doctrine that preference assignments in economics are just shorthand descriptions of agents' choice behaviour. Although most of these doctrines are problematic, the latter doctrine about preference assignments is a respectable one, I argue. It doesn't entail any of the problematic doctrines, and indeed it is warranted independently of them.
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  5. It’s Just A Feeling: Why Economic Models Do Not Explain.Anna Alexandrova & Robert Northcott - 2013 - Journal of Economic Methodology 20 (3):262 - 267.
    Julian Reiss correctly identified a trilemma about economic models: we cannot maintain that they are false, but nevertheless explain and that only true accounts explain. In this reply we give reasons to reject the second premise ? that economic models explain. Intuitions to the contrary should be distrusted.
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  6. Experimental Philosophy of Economics.Michiru Nagatsu - 2013 - Economics and Philosophy 29 (2):263-76.
    This article is a prelude to an experimental study of the preference concept in economics. I argue that a new empirical approach called experimental philosophy of science is a promising approach to advance the philosophy of economics. In particular, I discuss two debates in the field, the neuroeconomics controversy and the commonsensible realism debate, and suggest how experimental and survey techniques can generate data that will inform these debates. Some of the likely objections from philosophers and economists are addressed, and (...)
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  7. Idealization and the Aims of Economics: Three Cheers for Instrumentalism.Julian Reiss - 2012 - Economics and Philosophy 28 (3):363-383.
    This paper aims (a) to provide characterizations of realism and instrumentalism that are philosophically interesting and applicable to economics; and (b) to defend instrumentalism against realism as a methodological stance in economics. Starting point is the observation that ‘all models are false’, which, or so I argue, is difficult to square with the realist's aim of truth, even if the latter is understood as ‘partial’ or ‘approximate’. The three cheers in favour of instrumentalism are: (1) Once we have usefulness, truth (...)
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  8. Reviews: Milton’s Positivism Found Wanting. [REVIEW]David Hammes - 2011 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 41 (3):398-419.
    Milton Friedman’s 1953 essay created controversy and consternation amongst economists. It provided a prescription, based on empirically generated predictive success, of how to do economics, yet many saw it as a concession of the search for truth and theoretical beauty within the discipline. This article reviews a 50th anniversary festschrift devoted to views of the essay. The purpose of the volume is to provide today’s reader with the essay, responses, and a guide to interpreting it. The volume is selective and (...)
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  9. Why Friedman's methodology did not generate consensus among economists?David Teira - 2009 - Journal of the History of Economic Thought 31 (2):201-214.
    In this paper I study how the theoretical categories of consumption theory were used by Milton Friedman in order to classify empirical data and obtain predictions. Friedman advocated a case by case definition of these categories that traded theoretical coherence for empirical content. I contend that this methodological strategy puts a clear incentive to contest any prediction contrary to our interest: it can always be argued that these predictions rest on a wrong classification of data. My conjecture is that this (...)
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  10. Some Building Blocks for a Theory of the Firm as a Real Entity.David Gindis - 2007 - In Yuri Biondi, Arnaldo Canziani & Thierry Kirat (eds.), The Firm as an Entity: Implications for Economics, Accounting and the Law. London, UK: pp. 266-291.
    The firm is a real entity and not an imaginary, fictitious or linguistic entity. This implies that the firm as a whole exhibits a sufficient degree of unity or cohesiveness and is durable and persistent through time. The firm is essentially composed of a particular combination of constituents that are bound together by something that acts as an ontological glue, and is therefore non-reducible to other more basic entities, i.e., to its parts or its members. From our perspective, the firm (...)
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  11. Milton Friedman, the Statistical Methodologist.David Teira - 2007 - History of Political Economy 39 (3):511-28.
    In this paper I study Milton Friedman’s statistical education, paying special attention to the different methodological approaches (Fisher, Neyman and Savage) to which he was exposed. I contend that these statistical procedures involved different views as to the evaluation of statistical predictions. In this light, the thesis defended in Friedman’s 1953 methodological essay appears substantially ungrounded.
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  12. Price, Principle, and the Environment, Mark Sagoff. Cambridge University Press, 2004, x + 284 pp. [REVIEW]Pat Devine - 2006 - Economics and Philosophy 22 (2):281-287.
  13. What a rational action!: A review of Bruno S. Frey's Not Just for the Money: an Economic Theory of Personal Motivation. [REVIEW]S. P. H. Heap - 1999 - Journal of Economic Methodology 6:140-144.
  14. On the theoretical basis of prediction in economics.Wenceslao J. González - 1996 - Journal of Social Philosophy 27 (3):201-228.
  15. Testing, Rationality, and Progress: Essays on the Popperian Tradition in Economic Methodology.D. Wade Hands - 1993 - Roman & Littlefield.
    This book brings together ten previously published essays on the philosophy of economics and economic methodology. The general theme is the application of Karl Popper's philosophy of science to economics -- not only by Popper himself but also by other members of the "Popperian school." There are three major issues that surface repeatedly: the applicability of Popper's falsificationist philosophy of science; the applicability of I. Lakatos's "methodology of scientific research programs" to economics; and the question of Popper's "situational analysis" approach (...)
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  16. In Defense of Explanatory Ecumenism.Frank Jackson - 1992 - Economics and Philosophy 8 (1):1-21.
    Many of the things that we try to explain, in both our common sense and our scientific engagement with the world, are capable of being explained more or less finely: that is, with greater or lesser attention to the detail of the producing mechanism. A natural assumption, pervasive if not always explicit, is that other things being equal, the more finegrained an explanation, the better. Thus, Jon Elster, who also thinks there are instrumental reasons for wanting a more fine-grained explanation, (...)
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  17. Milton Friedman: Economics in Theory and Practice, by Abraham Hirsch and Neil de Marchi, University of Michigan Press, 1990, VIII+325 pages. [REVIEW]Philippe Mongin - 1992 - Economics and Philosophy 8 (1):183-191.
    A review of A. Hisch and N. de Marchi's thorough historical study on Milton Friedman's life-long work as an economist (and more specifically as a monetary economist) and as an economic methodologist (in his famous essay "The Methodology of Positive Economics".
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  18. Economics: mathematical politics or science of diminishing returns?Alexander Rosenberg - 1992 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    Economics today cannot predict the likely outcome of specific events any better than it could in the time of Adam Smith. This is Alexander Rosenberg's controversial challenge to the scientific status of economics. Rosenberg explains that the defining characteristic of any science is predictive improvability--the capacity to create more precise forecasts by evaluating the success of earlier predictions--and he forcefully argues that because economics has not been able to increase its predictive power for over two centuries, it is not a (...)
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  19. Thirteen Theses on Progress in Economic Methodology.D. Wade Hands - 1990 - Finnish Economic Papers 3:72-76.
  20. Plausibility in Economics.Bart Nooteboom - 1986 - Economics and Philosophy 2 (2):197.
    According to the instrumentalism of Friedman and Machlup it is irrelevant whether the explanatory principles or “assumptions” of a theory satisfy any criterion of “plausibility,” “realism,” “credibility,” or “soundness.” In this view the main or only criterion for selecting theories is whether a theory yields empirically testable implications that turn out to be consistent with observations. All we should require or expect from a theory is that it is a useful instrument for the purpose of prediction. Considerations of the “efficiency” (...)
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  21. Lakatosian Consolations for Economics.Alexander Rosenberg - 1986 - Economics and Philosophy 2 (1):127.
    The F-twist is giving way to the methodology of scientific research programs. Milton Friedman's “Methodology for Economics” is being supplanted as the orthodox rationale for neoclassical economics by Imre Lakatos' account of scientific respectability. Friedman's instrumentalist thesis that theories are to be judged by the confirmation of their consequences and not the realism of their assumptions has long been widely endorsed by economists, under Paul Samuelson's catchy rubric “the F-twist.” It retains its popularity among economists who want no truck with (...)
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