Pluralism in Economics sheds new light on the various meanings and consequences of pluralist approaches to the history and methodology of economics. The first part focuses on philosophical and methodological issues. The second part contains six case studies which discuss diverse issues but adopt...

It has been repeatedly maintained that Popperian falsificationism ought to be regarded as the proper metho dological framework for the appraisal of economic theories. More rece ntly, it has also been argued we should look at Popperian fallibilism as the right epistemological perspective for...

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...

Air travel routes and high speed rail connection between Milan and Rome after the Alitalia crisis This paper analyses the first available data about changes in passenger traffic and air/rail fares after the Alitalia crisis and the substantial reduction of the travel time between Milan and Rome,...

In economics, models, rather than theories, seem to be the fundamental units of appraisal and practitioners seem to hold in high esteem the criterion of ‘robustness’. In this paper we shall try to explicate the multifarious notion of robustness, and articulate it on three different...

We investigate the different ways in which the results of theoretical models can be ‘robust’. We identify three kinds of ‘robustness’: (1) robustness to changes in the model’s idealisations; (2) robustness to changes in the ‘background’ conditions; (3) robustness to changes in the...

A recent exchange between the late Mark Blaug and Heinz Kurz and Neri Salvadori on the relevance of Sraffian economics (and a significant amount of more orthodox approaches, for that matter) does not seem to offer conclusive arguments, mainly because both contenders share some outmoded...