The metrology literature neglects a strong empirical measurement tradition in economics, which is different from the traditions as accounted for by the formalist representational theory of measurement. This empirical tradition comes closest to Mari's characterization of measurement in which he...

Halfway through the 1930s, a new practice was born that was based on instruments called 'models'. This practice is characterized by building and applying empirical models, i.e. representations of (aspects of) the world. The aim of this chapter is to explore these kinds of representations

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, a large number of price index number formulae have been developed, mostly named after their inventors, such as the Paasche and Layspeyres indexes. Parallel with the invention of new index formulae, criteria were developed for distinguishing between...

The assessment of models in an experiment depends on their material nature and their function in the experiment. Models that are used to make the phenomenon under investigation visible - sensors - are assessed by calibration. However, calibration strategies assume material intervention. The...

The article discusses economic models as instruments of measuring economic phenomena from obtainable numerical facts; as in the theory of measurement where measurement is the mapping of a property of the empirical world into sets of numbers. Contributions of notable people such as Ragnar Frisch...

There are at least two elements of theory completion necessary for measurement: (1) a measurement formula and (2) standardization of that representation. Standardization is based on the search for stability. The more stable the correlation which the measurement formula represents is, the less...

The rational expectations revolution was not only based on the introduction of Muth's idea of rational expectations to macroeconomics; the introduction of Muth's hypothesis cannot explain the more drastic change of the mathematical toolbox and concepts, research strategies, vocabulary, and...

Mathematical molding disappeared in the changeover from methods to specify causal mechanisms of business cycles to methods to identify economic structures, that is, invariant relationships underlying the workings of an economy. Mathematical molding could fulfill its role in modeling business...

A modelling strategy that accounts for measurement outside the laboratory, where one cannot base measurements on a single simple law, will have to drop the requirement that the model is a homomorphic mapping of the empirical relational structure. The model used for measurement will be a...

Mathematical models are instruments of investigation, epistemological equivalent to the microscope and the telescope. In comparing the epistemological difference between models and experiments, Morgan (2005) argues that experiments offer greater epistemic power than models as a means to...