This paper provides a systematic assessment of academic economics teaching, research and policy advice in Germany. It assembles recent empirical studies and contributes by presenting their main findings in a comprehensible manner as well as contextualizing them in the current economic and...

The Great Recession and the financial crisis of 2007-09 prompted ca lls for fundamental reforms of economic theory. The role of theory in economics and in recent economic events is considered in light of two recen t books: the sociologist Richard Swedberg's The Art of Social Theory and the...

On December 5th and 6th 2014, the Stanford Graduate School of Business hosted the Causality in the Social Sciences Conference. The conference brought together several distinguished speakers from philosophy, economics, finance, accounting and marketing with the bold mission of debating scientific...

Objective: The objective of the article is to refer to the thesis about the need to modify the main paradigm of economic sciences - by which we mean mainstream economics - with all its consequences that influence the whole economic sciences. We posit the need for the modification of how economic...

There are many goals an instructor may wish to accomplish in a course on economic principles. For us the definitive goal is the generation of sensible and active members of a civil society. This is an ambitious goal: it requires that students internalize the economic way of thinking and learn to...

Through this paper I try to join the lively debate around mainstream economics with a view to calling attention to some methodological aspects. It is aimed at outlining an interpretation based on Max Weber's traditional neoclassical methodology that can help us to find the adequate territory of...

Economic experiments interact with economic theories in various ways. First of all they are used to test economic theories. However, they can neither confirm nor falsify them in a strict sense. They rather inform us about the range of applicability, the robustness and the predictive power of a...

"Empirical" economists typically have no problem with data-driven, inductive research. But so-called Austrian economists have always objected strenuously on ontological and epistemological grounds that such studies do not produce real knowledge (Mises 1998, 113-115; Mises 2007). Camps of economists...

We suggest that one way in which economic analysis is useful is by offering a critique of reasoning. According to this view, economic theory may be useful not only by providing predictions, but also by pointing out weaknesses of arguments. It is argued that, when a theory requires a non-trivial...