Institutionalist economists have always been criticizing the neoclassical way of studying the economy, especially because of its obsession to a very strict and flawed formalism. This formalism receives critique also from advocates of agent-based computational economic (ACE) models. The criticism...

This paper is motivated by the observation that (1) socio economic analysis uses significantly less formalisms than mainstream economics, and (2) that there exist numerous situations in which socio economics could benefit from a more formal analysis. This is particularly the case if institutions...

This article uses the functional decomposition approach to modeling Mäki (2009b) to discuss the importance of methodological considerations before choosing a modeling framework in applied research. It considers the case of agent-based models and dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models to...

Classical economists from Adam Smith to Thomas Malthus and to Karl Marx have considered the importance of <i>direct interdependence</i> and direct interactions for the economy. This was even more the case for original institutionalist thinkers such as Thorstein Veblen, John Commons, and Clarence Ayres....

Theoretical models of the Kuznets Curve have been purely analytical with little contribution towards an understanding of the timing of the process and the presence of additional mechanisms affecting its timing. This paper proposes an agent-based version of Acemoglu and Robinson’s model of the...

This paper provides an introduction to the Minsky-Veblen Cycles as a specific example of pluralist economic thinking in the context of the recent global economic crisis. It illustrates how pluralism can be applied to economic research. Specifically, the Minsky-Veblen Cycles combine three...

This paper estimates the potential revenues of a wealth tax for Austria. This becomes possible due to the first comprehensive survey on Austrian household wealth (Household Finance and Consumption Survey, HFCS), which was coordinated by the European Central Bank and conducted by the Austrian...

Ausgehend von der Einsicht, dass die Forderung nach Demokratie im Kontext privaten Konsums sowohl als Appell zu größerer individueller Wahlfreiheit als auch als Ausgangspunkt gemeinschaftlicher Regulierungsinitiativen verstanden werden kann, versucht der vorliegende Beitrag zu demonstrieren,...

It is a well-known criticism that due to its exponential distribution, survey data on wealth is hardly reliable when it comes to analyzing the richest parts of society. This paper addresses this criticism using Austrian data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). In doing so...