This paper asks the question: Why has the "general-to-specific" cointegrated VAR approach as developed in Europe had only limited success in the US as a tool for doing empirical macroeconomics, where what might be called a "theory comes first" approach dominates? The reason this paper highlights...

In dieser Arbeit wird untersucht, ob Wettbewerb in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften existiert. Es besteht ein Monopol der heutigen neoklassischen Modellökonomik, was zu einer geringen Pluralität der wissenschaftlichen Ansätze und Perspektiven führt. Der wissenschaftliche Fortschritt wird...

Social and economic networks are ubiquitous, serving as contexts for job search, technology diffusion, the accumulation of human capital and even the formulation of norms and values. The systematic empirical study of network formation - the process by which agents form, maintain and dissolve...

Models have been extensively analysed in economic methodology, notably their degree of ability to provide explanations. This paper takes a complementary, comparative approach, examining theory development in the natural sciences. Examples show how diverse types of evidence combine with causal...

A popular view of models among economists and philosophers alike is that all models are false, but some are useful. Models are frequently treated as convenient fictions, idealizations, stories about credible worlds, or "near enough" to the truth. But such a understandings pose serious questions,...