The emergence of experimental economics in the last third of the 20th century revisited the long-standing belief that economics is a non-experimental discipline. The history of this new practice reveals this went further than simply introducing the experimental method to economics. Its history...

In this article, the author offers a discussion of the evidential role of the Galilean constant in the history of physics. The author argues that measurable constants help theories constrain data. Theories are engines for research, and this helps explain why the Duhem-Quine thesis does not...

The main point of this paper is to contribute to understanding Milton Friedman’s (1953) “The Methodology of Positive Economics” (hereafter F1953), one of the most influential statements of economic methodology of the twentieth century, and, in doing so, help discern the non trivial but...

This article presents a review on the economics literature on co-operatives from the point of view of economic methodology. I compare two different approaches, the neoclassical approach and the new institutional approach. The former approach is exemplified by Jaroslav Vanek's (1970) The General...

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,...

Behavioral economics emerged in the second half of the 20th century and has become an important social science research area. Some have argued that the emergence of behavioral economics (BE) amounts to a scientific revolution. That is, they argue that BE is becoming or has become the new,...

The rhetoric of positivism had a profound effect on the worldview and practice of economists in the middle of the last century. Though this influence has greatly diminished, it still may be found in the attitude of many economists towards the history of their discipline. This paper traces the...

In 1985, when historians of economics had barely begun to examine the field of statistical economics (or econometrics), Carl F. Christ, once a Cowles Commission econometrician, noted in an historical survey that “one of the most famous relations ever estimated by least squares was in ‘A...

When Robbins' Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science was first published, it was mostly criticized for depriving economists of an important professional market (policy advice) and for detaching economics from policy considerations. Most critics considered Robbins' Essay as the...

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,...