The rhetoric of positivism had a profound effect on the worldview and practice of economists in the middle of the last century. Though this influence has greatly diminished, it still may be found in the attitude of many economists towards the history of their discipline. This paper traces the...

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...

Founded fifty years ago, the History of Economics Society served in its early years to support scholarship and teaching in the history of economic thought. But the decades long removal of history from economics departments and graduate programs has made the Society's mission increasingly...

This draft chapter for the Elgar International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics is intended to give advice to instructors who might be teaching a history of economic thought course to undergraduates for the first time or who have perhaps been teaching for a while but would like to...

This draft chapter for the Elgar International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics is intended to give advice to instructors who might be teaching a history of economic thought course to undergraduates for the first time or who have perhaps been teaching for a while but would like to...

Leontief was and still is one of the most recognized names in economics, inextricably linked to the development of input-output techniques, but throughout his life he remained fiercely critical of other economists' works and of the state of economic science. To understand his bitterness, we go...

This article - designed to give readers unfamiliar with public choice a historical overview and flavor for the kinds of problems considered - is divided into three main sections, "historical origins," the "modern founders of MPE," and a brief description of some "current issues" studied by...

A review essay of Roman Frydman & Michael D. Goldberg's Beyond Mechanical Markets: Asset Price Swings, Risk, and the Role of the State.

The paper is a keynote lecture from the Tilburg-Madrid Conference on Hypothesis Tests: Foundations and Applications at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) Madrid, Spain, 15-16 December 2011. It addresses the role of tests of statistical hypotheses (specification tests) in...

The present essay investigates F.A. Hayek's epistemology and his methodology of sciences of complex phenomena for implications relevant to an explanation of Hayek's own so- called "epistemic turn." The thesis defended here is that Hayek's dissatisfaction with his technical economics – in...