Economics has always had a difficult relationship with literature. Although early economists such as Adam Smith adopted a literary approach, pressures soon emerged to develop formal theory imitating natural sciences. A key aim was to attain scientific status and avoid comparison with literary...

Knowledge in economics, as well as in other fields included in social sciences, can not be achieved upon the Galilean model, so customary in natural sciences. In time, its transfer conducted to the finding of some inconsistencies at the level of theory or between theory and practice. The...

This paper is prompted by the concluding comments to a recent paper (Denis “Hypostatisation”), which suggests that the neoclassical use of the concept of equilibrium expresses a formal mode of thought. Heterodox tendencies from Marxian to Austrian and Post Keynesian economics, that paper...

This essay does not attempt to discuss the problem of knowledge and science as they are. Starting from a (possible) working hypothesis according to which knowledge is the process through which the man (in different socio-cultural contexts) awards a meaning to the world (real, possible, virtual)...

In social sciences two opposing tendencies act simultaneously: the growth of specialisation and the need for synthesis. Similar tendencies are noticable when economics and sociology are in question. The need for these two sciences to cooperate was noticed a long time ago. However, an incresingly...

This articles investigates the recent trends in co-authorship in economics. Using data from more than 700.000 journal articles we show that the average number of authors per article has increased over the last years. This process is likely to be continued in the future. In a regression analysis...

Differences in annual publication counts may reflect the dynamic of scientific progress. Declining annual numbers of publications may be interpreted as missing progress in field-specific knowledge. In this paper, we present empirical results on dynamics of progress in economic fields (defined by...

In this paper we explore three claims concerning the disciplinary character of economics by means of citation analysis. The three claims under study are: (1) economics exhibits strong forms of intellectual stratification and, as a byproduct, a rather pronounced internal hierarchy, (2) economists...

In broad parts of the scientific community the position in publication performance rankings, based on journal quality ratings is seen as highly reputational for the scientist. This contribution provides evidence that, at least in economics, such publication performance measures can not always be...

In broad parts of the scientific community the position in publication performance rankings, based on journal quality ratings is seen as highly reputational for the scientist. This contribution provides evidence that, at least in economics, such publication performance measures can not always be...