Ever since the beginnings of classical political economy in the early nineteenth century, economics has faced culturally based criticism from a long line of literary authors. This paper argues that the old literary criticisms are still relevant and can provide useful guidelines for economic...

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...

Founded fifty years ago, the History of Economics Society served in its early years to support scholarship and teaching in the history of economic thought. But the decades long removal of history from economics departments and graduate programs has made the Society's mission increasingly...

The rational expectations hypothesis (REH) is the standard approach to expectations formation in macroeconomics. We discuss its compatibility with two strands of Karl Popper's philosophy: his theory of knowledge and learning, and his "rationality principle" (RP). First, we show that the REH is...

Der sogenannten Mainstream-Ökonomie wird vorgeworfen, ihren Methoden liege ein zu einfaches Menschenbild zugrunde, sie sei geschichtsvergessen, und sie habe nicht rechtzeitig vor der Finanzkrise gewarnt. Wirtschaftswissenschaftler verschiedener Richtungen debattieren hier darüber, was...

The rational expectations hypothesis (REH) is the standard approach to expectations formation in macroeconomics. We discuss its compatibility with two strands of Karl Popper's philosophy: his theory of knowledge and learning, and his "rationality principle" (RP). First, we show that the REH is...

In an assessment of Lawson's social ontological analysis of the modern corporation, we consider what is marginalized: the significance of the status and the effects of the separate legal entity (SLE). The SLE is conceived as a specific type of construct that is ascribed particular properties...

Objective: The objective of the article is to refer to the thesis about the need to modify the main paradigm of economic sciences - by which we mean mainstream economics - with all its consequences that influence the whole economic sciences. We posit the need for the modification of how economic...

Apart from followers as Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, Ronald Coase, and Maurice Allais, most economists abandoned Irving Fisher’s economic framework after the post-1929 Great Crisis. Without citing Fisher however, in 1958 Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller reutilised his framework to found...

Economists seldom make explicit use of functional explanation, although they sometimes use it implicitly. Functional theorising has lost favour among social scientists in recent years, and few are now willing to adopt functional language. This paper argues that, despite some drawbacks, explicit...