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Articles 1 - 30 of 533
Full-Text Articles in Economics
(Wp 2026-04) The Concept Of Position And Its Ontological Meaning In The History Of Economics, John B. Davis
(Wp 2026-04) The Concept Of Position And Its Ontological Meaning In The History Of Economics, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
This paper examines the concept of relative position in the history of economics understood as ‘being in a position’ in a structure of positions. This is first discussed in macro-distributional terms in connection with Ricardo and Marx and in micro-behavioral terms in connection with Du Bois and Veblen. The paper then discusses two recent approaches in economics that employ the concept of relative position in a combined macro-micro analysis: the capability approach and stratification economics. For explicitly ontological analysis of the concept, the paper compares three different interpretative strategies from outside economics: Cambridge social positioning theory, embodied and distributed cognition …
(Wp 2026-03) Fomc Forecasts, Constant-Gain Learning, And Optimism/Pessimism, Stephen J. Cole
(Wp 2026-03) Fomc Forecasts, Constant-Gain Learning, And Optimism/Pessimism, Stephen J. Cole
Economics Working Papers
This paper uses an adaptive learning framework to study FOMC forecasts from the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) dataset. FOMC expectations are modeled as the sum of two components: (1) an endogenous learning part and (2) a sentiment part capturing waves of optimism and/or pessimism. The results include key policy takeaways. FOMC forecasts are responsive to incoming macroeconomic information, consistent with adaptive learning, while sentiment is persistent, correlated across GDP growth and inflation forecasts, and becomes quantitatively more important during and around recessions. FOMC participants also rely more on their endogenous/learning model to form expectations, but sentiment plays a larger …
(Wp 2026-02) Behavioral Macroeconomics, Kaleckian Post-Keynesian Economics, And Stratification Economics: Incorporating Social Identity, John B. Davis
(Wp 2026-02) Behavioral Macroeconomics, Kaleckian Post-Keynesian Economics, And Stratification Economics: Incorporating Social Identity, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
Behavioral Macroeconomics draws on cognitive psychology’s errors and biases approach to argue that psychological factors acting on individual choice affect how the economy functions. Keynes drew on psychology in his ‘beauty contest’ account of convention to explain individual investor expectations in terms of the average expectation of all investors. This assumes individual investors identify with the group of all investors, anticipating social psychology social identity analysis. Kaleckian Post-Keynesian Economics focuses on distributional conflict between capital and labor. This also assumes individual capitalists and laborers identify with groups of capitalists and laborers. Stratification Economics makes social group identity the basis on …
(Wp 2026-01) Du Bois And Veblen's Concepts Of Relative Position: Common Ground Or Stratification Economics And Institutionalist Economics, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
W. E. B. Du Bois and Thorstein Veblen employed the concept of relative position. Du Bois' thinking reflects how for Stratification economics people's relative positions explain racial discrimination and segregation. Veblen reflects how for Institutionalist economics people's relative positions explain the role institutions have in the evolution of the economy. Racism in the US marginalized Du Bois' contributions, leaving a divide between his and Veblen's thinking and also between Stratification economics and Institutionalist economics. This has limited the perceived importance of the concept of relative position in economics, leaving it with the 'position-less' asocial individualism of Neoclassical-mainstream economics. This paper …
(Wp 2025-06) Ramsey And Keynes...And Sraffa And Wittgenstein: Change In Interwar Cambridge Economics And Policy, John B. Davis
(Wp 2025-06) Ramsey And Keynes...And Sraffa And Wittgenstein: Change In Interwar Cambridge Economics And Policy, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
The Ramsey-Keynes exchange regarding the nature of probability is investigated in connection with the development of interwar Cambridge economics and Ramsey and Sraffa’s influences on Keynes and Wittgenstein. First discussed are Ramsey’s criticisms of Keynes and Wittgenstein; then Sraffa’s criticisms of Marshall and Wittgenstein. Ramsey was influenced by Peirce and pragmatism and Sraffa by Gramsci and the theory of cultural hegemony. Ramsey died in 1930 but Sraffa continued to interact with both Keynes and Wittgenstein. After his critique of Marshall he participated in the ‘Cambridge circus’ and turned to recovering the Classical economics of Ricardo. Keynes’s General Theory statement of …
(Wp 2025-05) Expanding Black Reparations With Human And Social Capital Investments, John B. Davis
(Wp 2025-05) Expanding Black Reparations With Human And Social Capital Investments, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
Disadvantaged social groups in the US suffered disproportionately in the covid pandemic and Great Recession, worsening high levels of inequality associated with their post-1980 declining intergenerational income mobility. For black Americans this reflects the long history of racial discrimination beginning with slavery. Reparations paid to descendants of enslaved individuals to eliminate the black-white wealth gap is a step toward addressing this history. A further needed step is to build predominantly black communities human and social capital through public investments in community health care centers (CHCs) and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). There is considerable evidence that investments in early …
(Wp 2025-04) Individual And Collective Behavior, John B. Davis
(Wp 2025-04) Individual And Collective Behavior, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
Compares the mainstream and Institutional and evolutionary economics views of individual and collective behavior. Describes the methodological assumptions for each. Distinguishes the two opposed approaches conceptions of time they employ. Explains the role social identity applies in explaining two opposed approaches adopt different conceptions of time. Closes with an explanatory dilemma the subject creates.
(Wp 2025-02) How Does The Fomc Form Forecasts? An Adaptive Learning Approach Utilizing Sep Data, Stephen J. Cole
(Wp 2025-02) How Does The Fomc Form Forecasts? An Adaptive Learning Approach Utilizing Sep Data, Stephen J. Cole
Economics Working Papers
This paper examines how FOMC participants construct their Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) forecasts. FOMC expectations are assumed to contain two components: (1) an endogenous part that follows an adaptive learning model and (2) an exogenous part defined as sentiment (waves of optimism and/or pessimism). The results include key policy takeaways. The forecasts of FOMC members are responsive to new economic information. Their sentiment about future GDP growth and inflation also displays persistence and is correlated with each other. Moreover, FOMC participants rely more on their endogenous/learning model to form expectations. However, sentiment plays a larger role during and around …
(Wp 2025-03) Ethics In Economics - Not Ethics And Economics: Guidance For Researchers, John B. Davis
(Wp 2025-03) Ethics In Economics - Not Ethics And Economics: Guidance For Researchers, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
This paper, originally a presentation at the 2024 World Congress of Social Economics Summer School at University of Massachusetts-Boston, discusses how ethical values can be incorporated in empirical research. It identifies mainstream economics’ barriers to doing this, and shows they produce a view of the relationship between ethics and economics that excludes ethics from economics. Mainstream economics sees this relationship as interdisciplinary – an ethics and economics. I argue it should be seen as multidisciplinary – an ethics in economics. The mainstream regards ethical values as subjective assuming that there are no facts about ethical values. But there is considerable …
(Wp 2025-01) Trautwein's Challenge To The History Of Economics, John B. Davis
(Wp 2025-01) Trautwein's Challenge To The History Of Economics, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
Hans-Michael Trautwein’s presidential address to the European Society raised provocative questions regarding the nature of current economics that should concern not just historians of economics but economists as well (Trautwein, 2017). Are the processes driving current research in economics creating a greater and greater specialization in subjects and economic thinking that is fragmenting and disunifying the field? Here I discuss Trautwein’s question and his answer to it particularly as bear on the future status and responsibilities of the history of economics as a field within economics. First, I give an account of what is involved in research specialization in science …
Building Diversity Into The Philosophy And Methodology Of Economics With Stratification Economics, Merve Burnazoglu, John B. Davis
Building Diversity Into The Philosophy And Methodology Of Economics With Stratification Economics, Merve Burnazoglu, John B. Davis
Economics Faculty Research and Publications
Mainstream economics ignores who produces it and what it is about because its average man, Homo economicus ontological entry-point obscures social differences between people. Philosophy and Methodology of Economics that assumes this ontological entry point generally limits itself to epistemological analysis, and this means it fails to make diversity a fundamental concern. Taking diversity seriously entails being clear about one's ontological assumptions, and this requires being clear about the normative scope of one's analysis. This calls for giving up a value-neutral methodological reasoning and adopting a value-explicit methodological posture. To illustrate, we describe how Stratification economics with its social groups …
(Wp 2024-05) Emerging Engagement Between Philosophy And Philosophy Of Economics: Parfit, Simon, And Sen, John B. Davis
(Wp 2024-05) Emerging Engagement Between Philosophy And Philosophy Of Economics: Parfit, Simon, And Sen, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
This paper investigates philosophy’s engagement with one social science, economics, via the philosophy of economics. It first distinguishes mainstream philosophy of economics and heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics, and then argues that the latter’s increasing recourse to analytical reasoning in philosophy to advance its critiques of mainstream economics points toward a new engagement between philosophy of economics and philosophy. To provide grounds for this argument, the paper discusses shared thinking of three key figures: philosophy’s Derek Parfit and from economics Herbert Simon and Amartya Sen. It argues their respective critiques of dominant ideas in their fields reflect a little discussed convergence …
(Wp 2024-04) Making Philosophy Relevant To Economists, John B. Davis
(Wp 2024-04) Making Philosophy Relevant To Economists, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
This chapter discusses how philosophy could influence economists in the future. It emphasizes factors affecting economists’ willingness to incorporate philosophical ideas in economics, and distinguishes a weak case and a strong case for them doing so. Both are tied to behavioral welfare economics’ ‘reconciliation problem’ regarding the relationship between positive and normative economics. The weak case concerns the nature of individual identity in connection with how present bias and weakness of will potentially pit today’s and tomorrow’s selves against one another. The strong case concerns the normative scope of economic policy and expanding policy recommendation beyond its current welfare-only basis. …
Coupling And Decoupling Of Ancestral Linkages And Current Cross-Border Economic Activities: Genetics And Policy, Suparna Chakraborty, Miao Grace Wang, M.C. Sunny Wong
Coupling And Decoupling Of Ancestral Linkages And Current Cross-Border Economic Activities: Genetics And Policy, Suparna Chakraborty, Miao Grace Wang, M.C. Sunny Wong
Economics Faculty Research and Publications
This paper studies the potential link between the biological evolution of populations and present-day economic interactions by estimating the correlation of shared ancestry among populations with cross-border capital and human flows. To this end, we employ the new concept of genetic distance, based on (dis)similarity of neutral gene alleles, to quantify shared ancestry. We then incorporate the genetic distance measure into an augmented gravity model, traditionally used to analyze the effect of geographical distance on bilateral exchange. Our analysis focuses on bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) and migration across 135 countries and we use both linear regression techniques as well …
Measuring The Effects Of Unconventional Monetary Policy Tools Under Adaptive Learning, Stephen J. Cole, Sungjun Huh
Measuring The Effects Of Unconventional Monetary Policy Tools Under Adaptive Learning, Stephen J. Cole, Sungjun Huh
Economics Faculty Research and Publications
We compare the economic effects of forward guidance and quantitative easing utilizing the four-equation New Keynesian model of Sims et al. (2023) with agents forming expectations via an adaptive learning rule. The results indicate forward guidance can have a greater influence on macroeconomic variables compared to quantitative easing. Adaptive learning agents estimate a higher effect of forward guidance on the economy leading to a greater impact on expectations, and thus, contemporaneous inflation. However, the performance gap between forward guidance and quantitative easing can change. If quantitative easing includes anticipated shocks, more households finance consumption through long-term borrowing, and the central …
(Wp 2024-03) The Dynamic Temporal Sequence And Reflexive Adjustment Behavior: Foundations For A Behavioral Alternative To Optimization Theory, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
This paper discusses the difference between mainstream and heterodox economics in terms of philosophy’s distinction between two types of temporal sequences governing events: the static, truth-tenseless before-after sequence and the dynamic, truth-tensed past-present-future sequence. Mainstream theory and optimization analysis employs the first. However, Aristotle showed long ago this implies fatalism. Heterodox explanations employ the second, which I argue implies people reflexively adjust their choices over time in a combined backward-looking and forward-looking way that rules out optimization. Central to this explanation of behavior is how uncertainty about the future is connected to uncertainty about the past. I show this can …
Remotely Sensed Imagery Reveals Animal Feeding Operations Increase Downstream Dissolved Reactive Phosphorus, Andrew G. Meyer, Zach Raff, Sarah Porter
Remotely Sensed Imagery Reveals Animal Feeding Operations Increase Downstream Dissolved Reactive Phosphorus, Andrew G. Meyer, Zach Raff, Sarah Porter
Economics Faculty Research and Publications
In this paper, we use remotely sensed imagery to identify the location and size of animal feeding operations in the Maumee River Watershed, a key drainage area to Lake Erie's Western Basin, which has recently experienced severe harmful algal blooms. We then estimate the relationship between the intensity of animal feeding operations in the watershed and surface water body concentrations of dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP), the pollutant most responsible for algal growth. We find that stream reaches with relatively larger increases in upstream animal feeding exposure experience significantly higher increases in concentrations of DRP. The average marginal upstream animal feeding …
(Wp 2024-02) Stratification Economics: Historical Origins And Theoretical Foundations, John B. Davis
(Wp 2024-02) Stratification Economics: Historical Origins And Theoretical Foundations, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
Stratification economics (SE) investigates how economies are organized around group inequalities, especially by race and gender but also by ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Its historical origins and theoretical foundations have both a structural strand that addresses how and a social behavioral strand. SE's structural strand goes back to Ricardo and Marx regarding the relationship between growth and distribution, and then draws on recent economic theory of noncompeting groups and dual economy models of labor market segmentation. SE's structural strand produces an inequality-based understanding of economics' standard goods taxonomy. The social behavioral strand builds on Du Bois's psychological …
The Effect Of Water Pollution Regulation On Prices: Evidence From Wisconsin’S Phosphorus Rule And Sewer Utility Bills, Andrew G. Meyer, Zach Raff
The Effect Of Water Pollution Regulation On Prices: Evidence From Wisconsin’S Phosphorus Rule And Sewer Utility Bills, Andrew G. Meyer, Zach Raff
Economics Faculty Research and Publications
In this paper, we estimate the consumer impacts of Wisconsin's “phosphorus rule”, which created the most stringent statewide water quality and effluent standards for phosphorus in the country. We examine how compliance with the rule affects real billing rates at sewer utilities in Wisconsin, providing the first empirical estimates of water pollution regulation on utility billing rates. We find that compliance with the phosphorous rule increases the average real sewer utility bill in our sample by 7–12%. Our results imply that sewer utilities pass through approximately $65.8 million to residential sewer rate payers annually, which is roughly ⅔ of the …
(Wp 2024-01) Douglass North, New Institutional Economics, And Complexity Theory, John B. Davis, Mauro Boianovsky
(Wp 2024-01) Douglass North, New Institutional Economics, And Complexity Theory, John B. Davis, Mauro Boianovsky
Economics Working Papers
Douglass North was central to the emergence of New Institutional Economics. Less well known are his later writings where he became interested in complexity theory. He attended the second economics complexity conference at the Santa Fe Institute in 1996 on how the economy functions as a complex adaptive system, and in his 2005 Understanding the Process of Economic Change incorporated this thinking into his argument that market systems depend on how institutions evolve. North also emphasized in the 2005 book the role belief played in evolutionary processes, and drew on cognitive science, especially the famous ‘scaffolding’ idea of cognitive scientist …
Fostering Flexibility: How Medicare Advantage Potentially Accelerated Telehealth Benefits, Lisa M. Grabert, Grace Mccormack, Erin Trish, Kathryn L. Wagner
Fostering Flexibility: How Medicare Advantage Potentially Accelerated Telehealth Benefits, Lisa M. Grabert, Grace Mccormack, Erin Trish, Kathryn L. Wagner
Economics Faculty Research and Publications
In 2018, the US Congress enacted a policy permitting Medicare Advantage (MA) plans to cover telehealth services in a beneficiary’s home and through audio-only means as part of the basic benefit package of services, where prior to the policy change such benefits were only allowed to be covered as a supplemental benefit. MA plans were afforded 2 years of lead time for strategizing, negotiating, and capital investment prior to the start date (January 1, 2020) of the new coverage option. Our data analysis found basic benefit telehealth was offered by plans comprising 71% of enrollment in 2020 and increased to …
Legislative Redistricting And The Partisan Distribution Of Transportation Expenditure, Walter Melnik
Legislative Redistricting And The Partisan Distribution Of Transportation Expenditure, Walter Melnik
Economics Faculty Research and Publications
I show that a state representative’s political party determines transportation expenditure in the area she represents. Previous studies of this topic consider party changes through election outcomes, which may be correlated with unobservable determinants of expenditure. To overcome this issue, I identify my estimates using Ohio’s 2012 state legislative redistricting, which moved many geographic areas into districts with opposite party incumbents. The Republican party controlled the state legislature and governorship over the period I study. I find that areas moving from governing party Republican to minority party Democratic districts received $3.4M (0.18 standard deviations) less annual highway construction funding than …
(Wp 2023-06) Richard Arena On Sraffa And Wittgenstein, John B. Davis
(Wp 2023-06) Richard Arena On Sraffa And Wittgenstein, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
This paper discusses Richard Arena’s insightful and original contributions to interpreting the important interaction between Piero Sraffa and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It discusses this in terms of dilemmas they each encountered in transitions in their thinking in the 1930s, emphasizes the influence of Sraffa’s unpublished “Surplus Product” text, compares Sraffa’s critique of “natural science point of view” and Wittgenstein’s critique of logical form, and compares Sraffa’s later understanding of the relationship between production and distribution and Wittgenstein’s later understanding of forms of life and language-games. The paper argues this thinking opened up a approach to economic philosophy in connection with the …
(Wp 2023-05) Measuring The Effects Of Unconventional Monetary Policy Tools Under Adaptive Learning, Stephen J. Cole, Sungjun Huh
(Wp 2023-05) Measuring The Effects Of Unconventional Monetary Policy Tools Under Adaptive Learning, Stephen J. Cole, Sungjun Huh
Economics Working Papers
We compare the economic effects of forward guidance and quantitative easing utilizing the four-equation New Keynesian model of Sims, Wu, and Zhang (2023) with agents forming expectations via an adaptive learning rule. The results indicate forward guidance can have a greater influence on macroeconomic variables compared to quantitative easing, suggesting that forward guidance may have contributed to the high inflation rate after the COVID-19 related recession. Adaptive learning agents estimate a higher effect of forward guidance on the economy leading to a greater impact on expectations, and thus, contemporaneous inflation. However, the performance gap between forward guidance and quantitative easing …
(Wp 2023-04) Living Up To Expectations: Central Bank Credibility, The Effectiveness Of Forward Guidance, And Inflation Dynamics Post-Global Financial Crisis, Stephen J. Cole, Enrique Martínez-García, Eric Sims
(Wp 2023-04) Living Up To Expectations: Central Bank Credibility, The Effectiveness Of Forward Guidance, And Inflation Dynamics Post-Global Financial Crisis, Stephen J. Cole, Enrique Martínez-García, Eric Sims
Economics Working Papers
This paper studies the effectiveness of forward guidance when central banks have imperfect credibility. Exploiting unique survey-based measures of expected inflation, output growth, and interest rates, we estimate a small-scale New Keynesian model for the United States and other G7 countries plus Spain allowing for deviations from full information rational expectations. In our model, the key parameter that aggregates heterogeneous expectations captures the central bank's credibility and affects the over-all effectiveness of forward guidance. We find that the central banks of the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and other major advanced economies have similar levels of credibility (albeit far from full …
(Wp 2023-03) Economics Imperialism And Economic Imperialism: Two Sides Of The Same Coin, Angela Ambrosino, Mario Cedrini, John B. Davis
(Wp 2023-03) Economics Imperialism And Economic Imperialism: Two Sides Of The Same Coin, Angela Ambrosino, Mario Cedrini, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
We argue that in a core-periphery economic world economics imperialism as advanced by the postwar Chicago School and economic imperialism led by the economies of the north are two sides of the same coin. We first review the parallelism between postwar capitalism’s core-periphery expansion of the north into the south and the Chicago’s theory of economics imperialism. We then distinguish four forms of relationships between different disciplines, and using Rodrik’s augmented global capitalism trilemma argue Chicago adopts his Golden Straitjacket pathway, both for north-south capitalist expansion and core mainstream economics’ orientation toward other social science disciplines. The paper then uses …
Does Joining The European Monetary Union Improve Labor Productivity? A Synthetic Control Approach, Hong Zhuang, Miao Grace Wang, Imre Ersoy, Mesut Eren
Does Joining The European Monetary Union Improve Labor Productivity? A Synthetic Control Approach, Hong Zhuang, Miao Grace Wang, Imre Ersoy, Mesut Eren
Economics Faculty Research and Publications
We adopt the innovative synthetic control method (SCM) to study the causal effect of joining the European Monetary Union (EMU) on member countries’ labor productivity. Comparing labor productivity between members and their synthetic counterparts, we find that Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands experienced significant labor productivity gains from the eurozone membership. Our results are robust to a series of sensitivity checks. We also observe similar effects of EMU on members’ total factor productivity (TFP). Furthermore, we explore potential channels through which a monetary union can influence members’ labor productivity. Our results show that business cycle synchronization with …
(Wp 2023-02) What Are Reflexive Economic Agents? Position-Adjustment, Slam, And Self-Organization, John B. Davis
(Wp 2023-02) What Are Reflexive Economic Agents? Position-Adjustment, Slam, And Self-Organization, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
If mainstream economics and its view of economic agents is designed for a world in which reflexivity and feedback processes in the economy are ‘tamed’ and predictable, how are we to understand economic agents in a world in which reflexivity is ‘untamed’ and economies regularly exhibit unexpected fluctuations and significant nonlinearities? In a nonlinear world, economies evolve and undergo critical phase transitions from one form of organization to another. It seems, then, that we should also expect economic agents to evolve and undergo critical phase transitions from being one type of agent to another just as we observe that economies …
Work-Limiting Disabilities And Earnings Volatility, Nicholas A. Jolly, Kathryn L. Wagner
Work-Limiting Disabilities And Earnings Volatility, Nicholas A. Jolly, Kathryn L. Wagner
Economics Faculty Research and Publications
This paper examines how the onset of a work-limiting disability influences male earnings volatility as measured by the variance of transitory earnings. Using data from the 1970 to 2013 survey waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and a semi-parametric error components model, we decompose annual earnings into its permanent and transitory components. Results show that the variance of transitory earnings of disabled and non-disabled men is similar before onset of a work-limiting health condition. Upon onset, earnings volatility increases significantly, and does not return to pre-onset levels until at least five years after the last reported disability. Additional …
(Wp 2023-01) Objectivity In Economics And The Problem Of The Individual, John B. Davis
(Wp 2023-01) Objectivity In Economics And The Problem Of The Individual, John B. Davis
Economics Working Papers
This paper addresses objectivity in economics. It criticizes a closed science, ‘view from nowhere’ conception of economics and defends an open science, ‘view from somewhere’ conception of objective science. It ascribes the first conception to mainstream economics, associates it with its principle practices – reductionist modeling, formalization, limited interdisciplinarity, and value neutrality – and argues their foundation is the Homo economicus individual conception. Two problematic consequences of adopting this stance are: (i) value blindness regarding the range and complexity of human values; (ii) fatalism regarding human behavior associated with employing a tenseless representation of time. The paper contrasts the principle …