Economic measurements are generated by complicated systems of measurement involving economic and bureaucratic processes. Whether these measuring instruments produce reliable numbers: ‘facts’ that travel well, depends on the qualities of these systems. Ideas from metrology, and from the...

The development of David Ricardo’s economic theory of distribution - the laws that determine the share of output between the economic classes - depended on specific connections at several levels between two practical sciences of the early 19th century, namely experimental agriculture and...

The facts of social sciences are ones that stem from scientific expertise, but in the social world, everyone is their own expert. Everyone lives in society, and experiences either first-hand, or closely second-hand, the same phenomena that social scientists investigate. Consequently, people are...

The task of economic planning in the new nation of Nigeria in the early 1960s tested the limits of economic technologies: its recipes for development, its possibilities of measurement, and from differences in political economy. These dimensions of the problem beset not only the Nigerian...