In Hume's epistemology, induction leads to discovery in matters of fact. However, because of the poor data Hume analyzes the balance of trade with a thought experiment, doing what Mill makes explicit afterwards: reason from assumptions, to reach conclusions which are true in the abstract. Hume's...

Historians of the social sciences and historians of economics have come to agree that, in the United States, the 1940s transformation of economics from political economy to economic science was associated with economists’ engagements with other disciplines – e.g. mathematics, statistics,...

The present paper is devoted to showing that all externalist explanations for truth in economics are false, but that if there any are used, it should not be the democratic one utilized by Rosen (1997). Rather, even though it is equally fallacious, it should the one proposed in the present paper:...

This paper suggests that, with the help of Concordian economics, the economic process can be studied through the perspectives of Production of real wealth; Distribution of ownership rights; Consumption of financial instruments (as well as the integration of these three perspectives). The...

The term 'emergence' features only infrequently on the work of Friedrich Hayek, and then almost always merely as a synonym for 'spontaneous order'. The argument of this paper is that Hayek's accounts both of the working of the human mind, and also of the spontaneous order of the market, rely...

The economics profession has traditionally viewed rational choice theory as a positive scientific theory. Normative economics was associated exclusively with ethics and should be kept strictly separate from positive scientific economics. This paper argues that the profession is changing in this...

Jan Tinbergen and Milton Friedman were both very much inspired making economic theory work, applying it in service of society. The Tinbergen approach - the economist as Social Engineer - was exported to Chicago in the 1940s where one of Tinbergen's students - Tjalling Koopmans - became a...

This paper compares and contrasts two schools of political economy: the Austrian School, prominent members of which include Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises; and the Bloomington School, which was founded by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. It is argued that the two traditions share a good deal in...

This paper uses the theory of complex systems as a conceptual lens through which to compare the work of Friedrich Hayek and Vincent and Elinor Ostrom. It is well known that, from the 1950s onwards, Hayek conceptualised the market as a complex adaptive system. It is argued in this paper that,...

Financial economics and mathematical finance are the two traditional scientific disciplines that constitute modern financial theory. Although they still largely dominate modern financial theory, in the past few years a new “player” has increasingly been making itself felt and could lead to a...