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...

This paper examines the implicit links between models containing ordinal variables and their underlying unquantified counterparts that are necessary to make the former viable theoretical constructions. It is argued that when the underlying unquantified structure is unknown, the permissible...

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...