There is something extreme about Mises' apriorism, namely, his epistemological justification of the a priori element(s) of economic theory. His critics have long recognized and attacked the extremeness of Mises' epistemology of a priori knowledge. However, several of his defenders have glossed...

Popper recognizes that there are, at least, two versions of his "Rationality Principle" (RP) yet he does not explain either how they relate to other parts of his works or which version social scientists should adopt. We argue that Popper's formulation of RP can be upgraded by explicitly...

Through this paper I try to join the lively debate around mainstream economics with a view to calling attention to some methodological aspects. It is aimed at outlining an interpretation based on Max Weber's traditional neoclassical methodology that can help us to find the adequate territory of...

The role of first principles in economics is examined through the lens of dominant methodological approaches of the classical and neoclassical periods. First principles are most clearly displayed in pure deductive systems. The tension between first principles as the basis for deductivist...

The 1960s were the glorious age of large-scale, "economy-wide" macroeconometric models, which enabled forecasts and simulations of the quantitative effects of certain policy changes within systems of simultaneous equations. This paper is concerned (1) with the form and character of the kind of...

This paper does three things. First, based on a limited number of theoretically established dimensions, it proposes a new de facto indicator for the rule of law. It is the first such indicator to take the quality of legal norms explicitly into account. Second, using this indicator we shed new...

How can we assess the welfare of a society, its evolution over time and predict its change due to particular policy interventions? One way is to use survey-based welfare indicators such as the OECD Better Life Index. It invites people to weight a variety of quality of life indicators according...

Examining the most heavily-cited publications in labor economics from the early 1990s, I show that few of over 3000 articles citing them directly replicates them. They are replicated more frequently using data from other time periods and economies, so that the validity of their central ideas has...

This paper demonstrates how quality of life can be measured by plain text in a representative survey, the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Furthermore, the paper shows that problems that are difficult to monitor, especially problems like the state of the European Union, long-term...

How can we assess the welfare of a society, its evolution over time and predict its change due to particular policy interventions? One way is to use survey-based welfare indicators such as the OECD Better Life Index. It invites people to weight a variety of quality of life indicators according...