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 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...

This paper argues that, in attempting to provide accurate explanations of economic behavior, economists have to account, in the structures of their models, for the cultural backgrounds of the agents in question. In particular, utility and profit maximization (or their equivalent) cannot be used...

This paper suggests that mathematics may have become so important in economics for four reasons: (1) to make use of existing human capital, (ii) to attain scientific respectability, (3) to help assure security with respect to claims of truth, and (4) because economics was created primarily by...

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...

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...

This article traces the history of the failed automobile-trade negotiations between Japan and the United States from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. 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...