Economics places a high premium on completeness of explanation. Typical general-equilibrium accounts of economic phenomena are preferred to partial equilibrium accounts on the ground that important interactions are necessarily omitted in the latter. A similar preference for microfoundational...

Econometricians tend to hold simultaneously two views in tension with each other: an apparent anti-realism that holds that all models are false and at best useful constructs or approximations to true models and an apparent realism that models are to be judged by their success at capturing an...

Modern growth theory derives mostly from Robert Solow’s “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth” (1956). Solow’s own interpretation locates the origins of his “Contribution” in his view that the growth model of Roy Harrod implied a tendency toward progressive collapse of the...