This paper adds a moral angle to the pluralist approach to development economics, exploring the normative assumptions found in all the five main schools of thought that have analysed India's rural labour markets (neoclassical, new institutionalist, Marxist political economy, formalized political...

This paper addresses the link between the generation of economic knowledge and economic policy conclusions. Focusing on the case of research in international trade, It establishes a taxonomy of rhetorical practices used to make such a link. The flexibility observed in these practices contrasts...

Economists have often attempted precise measurement of phenomena which involve vague predicates. Difficulties emerge in such attempts if vagueness is not explicitly acknowledged at the methodological level. In this paper, various accounts of vague concepts are used to think about the economics...

The paper examines whether interpersonal comparisons of utility have to be interpreted as positive, normative or value-laden. It suggests first that recent arguments advanced by John Davis which appeal to the functional role of utility comparisons neither suffice to characterise utility...

This paper attempts to assess the recent literature on feminist economics from the perspective of modern Austrian economics. Feminists and Austrians share many epistemological and methodological criticisms of neoclassical theory, although Austrians have never linked those criticisms to gender....

Most economists will agree that Milton Friedman is a brilliant economist. Yet, the majority assessment is that his work is ideologically flawed, and that the Marshallian economics he advocates has been superseded by Walrasian economics. In this paper I argue that the reason for this negative...

Do economists accept absurd and unsupported claims about reality, and if so, why? We define four types of claims commonly made in economics that require different types of evidence, and show examples of each from the rational addiction literature. Claims about real world causal mechanisms and...

This paper outlines some of the main methodological issues to arise in macroeconomics, making the case that the methodological issues arising in macroeconomics are just as important as those arising in microeconomics and that they merit more attention. Focusing on the symposium to which it forms...