This paper investigates two different approaches to the analysis of institutions using game theory and discusses their methodological and theoretical implications for further research. Starting from von Neumann and Morgenstern's theory, we investigate, how Schotter and Schelling's approaches to...

We study a case that applies hermeneutics to social sciences, in particular to the Austrian school of economics. We argue that an inaccurate treatment of hermeneutics contributed to an epistemological downgrade of the Austrian school in the economic scientific community. We discuss how this...

Both behavioral and neoclassical economists maintain a concept of strict rationality that is exceptionally narrow. Neoclassicists use it as a tool both to explain what agents actually do and as a prescriptive framework. Behavioralists do not believe it adequately explains actual behavior but...

This article argues that within the current discussion of incentives in economics a crucial question is neglected: why are some incentives felt as very powerful reasons to alter actions at the same time as other incentives hardly manage to produce any effect at all, and while yet other...

This paper investigates the relationship between methodological individualism (MI) and Agent-Based Simulation (ABS). We discuss and analyze a thesis defended by philosophers Caterina Marchionni and Petri Ylikoski (2013). The thesis maintains that, since MI is often considered to be a...

Historians of economic thought are paying greater attention to issues of social ontology (that is, to the assumptions that economists make about the nature of social reality). In this paper, we contribute to this burgeoning literature by exploring the hitherto neglected way in which James...

The structure of the paper brings together three major sections, following the general approach to the impact of paradoxes in economic theory. The first section describes a necessary investigation in the synthesized universe of paradoxes, to capitalize on Quine's paradox taxonomy, and to reveal...

We will argue that the common contrast between Neoclassical models and Austrian School is not such, if it is assumed Friedman’s 1953 text, Musgrave’s (1981), and Mäki’s MISS account of models (Models as Isolations and credible Surrogate Systems). In this context the theory of market...

This paper uses Austrian capital theory to illustrate why empirical work can be elusive in typical Austrian themes. It explores the nature of the problem and different alternative solutions to empirical challenges. The paper also discusses the Austrian literature's epistemological approach to...

In recent years, the economic approach to human behavior has been challenged by contributions of cognitive science. Thus two methodological strands in economics disagree with each other: the objectivistic approach favors the methods of natural science; the subjectivistic approach takes the...