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Tables of Contents for The Methodology of Economics
Chapter/Section Title
Page #
Page Count
Preface
xi
Preface to first edition
xxv
Part I: What you always wanted to know about the philosophy of science but were afraid to ask
From the received view to the views of Popper
3
24
The received view
The hypothetico-deductive model
The symmetry thesis
Norms versus actual practice
Popper's falsificationism
A logical fallacy
The problem of induction
Immunizing stratagems
Statistical inference
Degrees of corroboration
A central conclusion
From Popper to the new heterodoxy
27
24
Kuhn's paradigms
Methodology versus history
Scientific research programs
Feyerabend's anarchism
Back to first principles
The case for methodological monism
Part II: The history of economic methodology
The verificationists, a largely nineteenth-century story
51
32
The prehistory of economic methodology
Mill's essay
Tendency laws
Mill's Logic
Mill's economics in practice
Cairnes's Logical Method
John Neville Keynes sums up
Robbins's Essay
Modern Austrians
The falsificationists, a wholly twentieth-century story
83
29
Ultraempiricism?
Apriorism once again
Operationalism
The irrelevance-of-assumptions thesis
The F-twist
The Darwinian survival mechanism
Naive versus sophisticated falsificationism
Back to essentialism
Institutionalism and pattern modeling
The current mainstream
The distinction between positive and normative economics
112
25
Hume's guillotine
Methodological judgments versus value judgments
Value-free social science?
A sample of the attack on Wertfreiheit
Solutions to the impossibility of Wertfreitheit
A brief historical sketch
Positive Paretian welfare economics
The invisible hand theorem
The dictatorship of Paretian welfare economics
The economist as a technocrat
Biases in assessing empirical evidence
Part III: A methodological appraisal of the neoclassical research program
The theory of consumer behavior
137
13
Introduction
Is the law of demand a law?
From indifference to revealed preference
Empirical work on demand
The importance of Giffen goods
Lancaster's theory of characteristics
The theory of the firm
150
11
The classic defense
Situational determinism
Competitive results despite oligopoly
General equilibrium theory
161
9
Testing GE theory
A theory or a framework?
Practical relevance
Marginal productivity theory
170
8
Production functions
The Hicksian theory of relative shares
Testing marginal productivity theory
Switching, reswitching, and all that
178
7
Measurement of capital
The existence of a demand function for capital
The empirical significance of reswitching
The Heckscher-Ohlin theory of international trade
185
7
The Heckscher-Ohlin theorem
Samuelson's factor-price-equalization theorem
The Leontief paradox
The Ohlin-Samuelson research program
Further tests
The Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek theorem
Keynesians versus monetarists
192
14
Fruitless debate?
Friedman's successive versions of monetarism
Friedman's theory
Phase III of monetarism
Recovering the message of Keynes
The rise and fall of monetarism
New classical macroeconomics
Macroeconomics seen through Lakatosian spectacles
Human capital theory
206
14
Hard core versus protective belt
Methodological individualism
The scope of the program
The screening hypothesis
A final appraisal
Afterthoughts
The new economics of the family
220
9
Household production functions
Adhockery
Some results
Verificationism again
In retrospect
The rationality postulate
229
8
The meaning of rationality
Rationality as sacrosanct
Criticisms of rationality
Part IV: What have we now learned about economics?
Conclusions
237
12
The crisis of modern economics
Measurement without theory
Falsificationism once again
Applied econometrics
The best way forward
Glossary
249
4
Suggestions for further reading
253
2
Bibliography
255
20
Name index
275
6
Subject index
281