How can an argument that is based on assumptions known to be false deliver any insightful conclusions let alone be used for policy recommendations? Over the years, a variety of concerns regarding (micro-)economic modelling and its relevance for real life have been expressed along these lines....

Financial professionals play a key role in financial markets and the financial industry as a whole. Researchers in experimental economics and finance have therefore started to employ financial professionals as experimental participants. We examine this recent development in the field by...

We examine the relationship between scientific knowledge and the legal system with a focus on the exclusion of expert testimony from trial as ruled by the Daubert standard in the US. We introduce a simple framework to understand and assess the role of judges as 'gatekeepers', monitoring the...

This paper models the inter-connections between the U.S. economy and five major economic regions in the world, namely, Japan, China, ASEAN, Latin America, and the European Union, using an inter-linkage coordinate space. This space is represented graphically, with the U.S. economy placed in the...

Caldwell's Beyond Positivism was a key publication that helped to precipitate the consolidation of the methodology of economics into a distinct subfield within economics. Reconsidering it after thirty-five years, it is striking for its anti-naturalism (i.e., its lack of deference to the actual...

This paper investigates the relationship between methodological individualism (MI) and Agent-Based Simulation (ABS). We discuss and analyze a thesis defended by philosophers Caterina Marchionni and Petri Ylikoski (2013). The thesis maintains that, since MI is often considered to be a...

If we take it that, at least in the social sciences, "realistic" implies "finite", then countless economic models involving infinitary assumptions must obviously be classified as unrealistic - for example, models with infinitely divisible goods, a continuum of traders, consumers optimizing over...

This paper models the inter-connections between the U.S. economy and five major economic regions in the world, namely, Japan, China, ASEAN, Latin America, and the European Union, using an inter-linkage coordinate space. This space is represented graphically, with the U.S. economy placed in the...

The state of contemporary economics had been a subject of discussion even before the most recent global financial crisis. The one-sidedness of the discipline has frequently been lamented and calls are often made for its pluralisation. Nevertheless, there is neither a consensus over the form of...

This paper seeks to examine the technical and theoretical orientation of the American Economic Review (AER) journal from 1911 until 2011. Arguably one of the most potent journals in economics, AER has been a pillar in the development of economics as a science through its focus on novel...