This paper examines the implicit links between models containing ordinal variables and their underlying unquantified counterparts that are necessary to make the former viable theoretical constructions. It is argued that when the underlying unquantified structure is unknown, the permissible...

This paper traces the history of the failed automobile-trade negotiations between Japan and the United States from the 1970’s to the mid 1990’s. It attributes the failure of those negotiations to a lack of understanding on both sides of not only what was motivating the other side, but also...

The Coffey-Tomlinson challenge to my view that the behavior of the Japanese firm is best understood without reference to profit maximization is met by arguing that (1) the outsourcing of production in Japan is, by itself, insufficient to warrant a claim of profit maximization; (2) behavior that...

This paper argues that the abandonment of general equilibrium theory by microeconomists was a mistake. It provides counter arguments to two of the reasons for that abandonment — lack of both generality and consistency with methodological individualism in uniqueness and stability analysis of...

This paper presents a model of the firm that includes the possibility of firm and employee-on-the-job decision making based on alternatives to profit and utility maximization. Such alternatives are relevant and significant when explaining firm activity in cultural environments in which self...

When empirically investigating situations in which human ignorance and historical time are significant features, use of the notion of probability, in any of its forms, is not legitimate. Thus, familiar distributional techniques such as hypothesis testing and estimation, and standard methods of...