bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Friedman's Permanent Income Hypothesis as an Example of Diagnostic Reasoning
Authors: Janssen Maarten C. W. , Tan Yao-Hua
Published: July 2009

Many recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) research are relevant for traditional issues in the philosophy of science. One of the developments in AI research we want to focus on in this article is diagnostic reasoning, which we consider to be of interest for the theory of explanation in general and for an understanding of explanatory arguments in economic science in particular. Usually, explanation is primarily discussed in terms of deductive inferences in classical logic. However, in recent AI research it is observed that a diagnostic explanation is actually quite different from deductive reasoning (see, for example, Reiter, 1987). In diagnostic reasoning the emphasis is on restoring consistency rather than on deduction. Intuitively speaking, the problem diagnostic reasoning is concerned with is the following. Consider a description of a system in which the normal behavior of the system is characterized and an observation that conflicts with this normal behavior. The diagnostic problem is to determine which of the components of the system can, when assumed to be functioning abnormally, account for the conflicting observation. A diagnosis is a set of allegedly malfunctioning components that can be used to restore the consistency of the system description and the observation. In this article, this kind of reasoning is formalized and we show its importance for the theory of explanation. We will show how the diagnosis nondeductively explains the discrepancy between the observed and the correct system behavior. The article also shows the relevance of the subject for real scientific arguments by showing that examples of diagnostic reasoning can be found in Friedman's Theory of the Consumption Function (1957). Moreover, it places the philosophical implications of diagnostic reasoning in the context of Mill's aprioristic methodology.
Gender, Metaphor, and the Definition of Economics
Authors: Nelson Julie A.
Published: July 2009

Let me make it clear from the outset that my main point isnoteither of the following: one, that there should be more women economists and research on “women's issues” (though I think there should be), or two, that women as a class do, or should do, economics in a manner different from men (a position with which I disagree). My argument is different and has to do with trying to gain an understanding of how a certain way of thinking about gender and a certain way of thinking about economics have become intertwined through metaphor – with detrimental results – and how a richer conception of human understanding and human identity could broaden and improve the field of economics for both female and male practitioners.
Stable Cooperation in Iterated Prisoners' Dilemmas
Authors: Sober Elliott
Published: July 2009

When does self-interest counsel cooperation? This question pertains both to the labile behaviors produced by rational deliberation and to the more instinctive and fixed behaviors produced by natural selection. In both cases, a standard starting point for the investigation is the one-shot prisoners' dilemma. In this game, each player has the option of producing one or the other of two behaviors (labeled “cooperate” and “defect”). The pay-offs to the row player are as follows:
On the Lexical Ordering of Social States According To Rawls' Principles of Justice
Authors: Moldau Juan Hersztajn
Published: July 2009

This article is concerned with the selection of an appropriate model of choice to underlie Rawls' (1971) two principles of justice. Rawls' first principle of justice states that basic liberty is not to be sacrificed for other objectives, including wealth. His second principle of justice suggests that even a minute decrease in the well-being of the least prosperous classes should not be accepted in exchange for an increase, no matter how large, in the well-being of more well-to-do citizens.
What Walrasian Marxism Can and Cannot Do
Authors: Roemer John
Published: July 2009

In their article “Roemer's ‘General’ Theory of Exploitation is a Special Case: The Limits of Walrasian Marxism,” Devine and Dymski portray me as some sort of Walrasian automaton who believes that phenomena that are not easily modelled using the Walrasian model of perfect competition do not exist. Their criticism of my theory assumes that I was attempting to model capitalism in its entirety, a task that, I agree, I failed to do. I did not propose a theory of accumulation, or of technological change, or of the methods by which capitalists maintain their ideological hegemony over workers, or of the methods by which they extract labor from labor power at the point of production. I was not, in short, trying to write an alternative to Das Kapital. My General Theory of Exploitation and Class (GTEC), as its Introduction explained, was an attempt at understanding the root causes of exploitation and class, so as to better understand how class formation and exploitation might occur in postcapitalist societies. To this end, I adopted a well-known scientific method: strip away many real aspects of the thing under study down to a minimal skeleton and see how many phenomena descriptive of the real thing one can generate. Then add more real aspects of the thing to the model, and see how much more one can generate.
Walrasian Marxism Once Again
Authors: Devine James , Dymski Gary
Published: July 2009

John Roemer's comment (1992) succinctly summarizes the logical structure of his own theory of capitalist exploitation, but misunderstands the main points of our critique. He reduces his argument to two propositions. The first is an “empirical proposition”about the “root causes of exploitation”:X+Y→Z, whereXis the existence of differential ownership of means of production (DOPA),Yis coercion in the labor process, and Z is the capitalist class structure and exploitation. The second is the strictly theoretical propositionX+ not-Y-”Z, the truth of which he demonstrates, given most of the assumptions of a Walrasian economic model. He concludes that these two propositions, taken together, demonstrate the primacy of DOPA in explaining capitalist class relations. This much is true – subject to the various limitations we have indicated in our article –but only within the restricted confines of a Walrasian framework.This purelytheoretical conclusionhas no force as anempirical conclusion:this is the point at which Roemer's interpretation goes awry. For obviously, DOPA is a crucial element of empirical reality. But because Roemer's Walrasian framework precludes other equally crucial elements of empirical reality (which are also conceptually central to Marxian discourse), an irreducible distance remains therein between the theoretical and the empirical.
Rights to Liberty in Purely Private Matters: Part II
Authors: Riley Jonathan
Published: July 2009

A claim that certain purely private matters should be beyond the reach of society's laws, moral rules, and other customs is central to the distinctive liberalism of John Stuart Mill. On Liberty, perhaps the most eloquent defense of individual liberty ever written, laments the hostility allegedly displayed in modern mass societies toward “the right of each individual to act [in private matters] as seems good to his judgement and inclinations” (1859, p. 271n.). In Mill's view, a free society must design its institutions with due regard for what he terms “individuality.” That is, public authority, whether in the form of law, customary opinion, or economic power, must be self-limiting so that it does not interfere with the rights of individuals to choose as they like with respect to such private concerns as religious faith, reading materials, living companions, and consumption of drugs and alcohol. Individuals and voluntary groups should be permitted to do whatever they prefer within their private spheres even if everyone else in society dislikes what they do, is annoyed by them, and actually chooses not to be around them or to befriend them (1859, pp. 276–91).
What is Utility?
Authors: Haslett D. W.
Published: July 2009

Social scientists could learn some useful things from philosophy. Here I shall discuss what I take to be one such thing: a better understanding of the concept ofutility. There are several reasons why a better understanding may be useful. First, this concept is commonly found in the writings of social scientists, especially economists (see, for example, Sen and Williams, 1982). Second, utility is the main ingredient in utilitarianism, a perspective on morality that, traditionally, has been very influential among social scientists. Third, and most important, with a better understanding of utility comes, as I shall try to show here, a better understanding of “personal welfare”. or, in other words, of what may be said to be in people's best interests. Such an understanding is useful to social scientists and philosophers alike, whether for utilitarian purposes or not.
The Economic Efficiency and Equity of Abortion
Authors: Meeks Thomas J.
Published: July 2009

On the face of it, the protracted public controversy over abortion in the United States and elsewhere might seem to rest on intractable normative questions inaccessible to economic analysis. But an influential early essay in the now sizable philosophical literature on the subject suggests otherwise. Judith Jarvis Thomson (1971) disarmingly inclined toward the view that “the fetus has already become a human person well before birth”,. presumably with all the rights pertaining thereto. She denied, however, that such rights necessarily include use of the mother's womb until birth. To illustrate her point, she compared the mother's situation to that, for example, of an unwilling Good Samaritan with a uniquely suited blood type, who is forced to share a kidney for 9 months with a famous, ailing violinist who needed its use for that duration to recover. Even if the life of a human being was at stake, the assertion of rights for the violinist or the fetus, she argued, would be too degrading for either the Good Samaritan's or the mother's status as a person, where large unwanted sacrifices would be required. Reduced to its economic essentials, the argument is that the mother has property rights to her own body, including the right to expel a “trespasser”. who would die as a consequence. Thus, the antiabortion position is neatly undercut by granting its major premise (the humanity of the fetus) while denying its conclusion.
“The Conflation of Productivity and Efficiency in Economics and Economic History”: A Comment
Authors: Nye John Vincent
Published: July 2009

In a recent article, Edward Saraydar (1989) takes economists and economic historians to task for equating productivity and efficiency in comparative economic analysis. Although I found his thesis interesting, I was a bit surprised to see selected remarks from my article on firm size in nineteenth-century France (Nye,1987) used to frame his criticism of productivity comparisons as a means of making prescriptive statements. The passages selected may mislead the reader as to the nature of my arguments. Let me quote Saraydar on this:
… I argue that … the problem with equating productivity with efficiency is that from the neoclassical standpoint this strongly suggests a prescriptive view - a view that things should be or should have been different - and thereby frees the analyst from the need to justify the utility costs that might be or might have been required to make things different. Thus, in the French industrialization debate, for example, Nye points out that evidence that smaller family firms were less productive would support the conclusion “that nineteenth-century French firms were too small (for whatever reasons) and that consequently French industry suffered from inefficiency” (Nye, 1987, pp. 667–68). Suppose the evidence to which Nye refers to existed. [My emphasis] Distributive considerations aside, in neoclassical economics a more Pareto-efficient state by its very nature is to be preferred to a less efficient one. Therefore, the implication is that family firms should have been larger and more productive. However, suppose also that the plethora of small family firms in nineteenth-century France, in fact, constituted a longstanding, widely accepted, socially imbedded institution. Clearly, the traditionalist thought-experiment and conclusion would ignore the potential costs in utility or satisfaction to owners of factors of production, a utility loss that may well have been required to make the “more efficient.” transformation to a relatively few large-scale industrial firms. That potential utility loss cannot be ignored and should be part of the analysis. (Saraydar, 1989, p. 56)
Making a Case When Theory is Unfalsifiable
Authors: Hirsch Abraham , de Marchi Neil
Published: July 2009

Milton Friedman's famous methodological essay contains, along with much else, some strands that look as though they were taken from the “empirical-scientific” fabric described by Karl Popper (Popper, 1959, pp. 32, 37; see also Klant, 1984, pp. 33ff. for a very clear discussion). Think, for example, of Friedman's conviction that the way to test a (theoretically embedded) hypothesis is to compare its implications with experience (Friedman, 1953a in 1953b, pp. 9, 13, 14). Or of his more or less explicit espousal of the view that while no amount of facts can ever prove a hypothesis true, a single “fact” may refute it (ibid., p. 9). Or of his assertion that hypotheses are to be accepted only as provisionally true (ibid., p. 41), and then only after repeated efforts to refute them have failed (ibid., pp. 9, 22–23). The appearance of these Popperian ideas is not surprising.
A Case for In-Kind Transfers
Authors: Kelman Steven
Published: July 2009

One of the most common policy-related messages that economists present to non-economists is the superiority of cash over in-kind transfers as a policy tool. A good deal of government policy on behalf of the poor consists, of course, of various forms of in-kind assistance, such as medical care or food stamps. However, if we wish to help the poor, the argument goes, in-kind transfers are an inferior way to do so.
The Politics and Morality of Unequal Exchange:Emmanuel and Roemer, Analysis and Synthesis
Authors: Schweickart David
Published: July 2009

When the relative importance of the national exploitation from which a working class suffers through belonging to the proletariat diminishes continually as compared with that from which it benefits through belonging to a privileged nation, a moment comes when the aim of increasing the national income in absolute terms prevails over that of the relative share of one part of the nation over the other. From that point onward the principle of national solidarity ceases to be challenged in principle, however violent and radical the struggle over the sharing of the cake may be. Thereafter a de facto united front of the workers and capitalists of the well-to-do countries, directed against the poor nations, coexists with an internal trade-union struggle over the sharing of the loot. (Emmanuel, 1972, p. 180)
Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution:An Evaluation in the Light of Vanberg's Critique
Authors: Hodgson Geoffrey M.
Published: July 2009

The application of evolutionary ideas to socioeconomic systems has been an increasingly prominent theme in the work of Friedrich Hayek, and the motif has become dominant in his recent book (Hayek, 1988). In an earlier issue of this journal, Viktor Vanberg (1986) raises two substantive criticisms of Friedrich Hayek' theory of cultural evolution that invoke some important questions concerning use of the evolutionary analogy in social science.
Decision Theory Without “Independence” or Without “Ordering”
Authors: Seidenfeld Teddy
Published: July 2009

It is a familiar argument that advocates accommodating the so-called paradoxes of decision theory by abandoning the “independence” postulate. After all, if we grant that choice reveals preference, the anomalous choice patterns of the Allais and Ellsberg problems (reviewed in Section 3) violate postulate P2 (“sure thing”) of Savage's (1954) system. The strategy of making room for new preference patterns by relaxing independence is adopted in each of the following works: Samuelson (1950), Kahneman and Tversky's “Prospect Theory” (1979), Allais and Hagen (1979), Fishburn (1981), Chew and MacCrimmon (1979), McClennen (1983), and in closely argued essays by Machina (1982, 1983 [see the latter for an extensive bibliography]).
The Ethical Limitations of the Market
Authors: Anderson Elizabeth
Published: July 2009

A distinctive feature of modern capitalist societies is the tendency of the market to take over the production, maintenance, and distribution of goods that were previously produced, maintained, and distributed by nonmarket means. Yet, there is a wide range of disagreement regarding the proper extent of the market in providing many goods. Labor has been treated as a commodity since the advent of capitalism, but not without significant and continuing challenges to this arrangement. Other goods whose production for and distribution on the market are currently the subject of dispute include sexual intercourse, human blood, and human body parts such as kidneys. How can we determine which goods are properly subjects of market transactions and which are not? The purpose of this article is to propose a theory of what makes economic goods differ from other kinds of goods, which can help to answer this question.
The Logic of Causal Inference: Econometrics and the Conditional Analysis of Causation
Authors: Hoover Kevin D.
Published: July 2009

Discontented people might talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness in the Commons and the necessity of reforming the Commons, said Mr. Spenlow solemnly, in conclusion; but when the price of wheat per bushel had been the highest, the Commons had been the busiest; and a man might lay his hand upon his heart, and say this to the whole world, – ‘Touch the Commons, and down comes the country!’
Beyond Self-Interest and Altruism: A Reconstruction of Adam Smith's Theory of Human Conduct
Authors: Khalil Elias L.
Published: July 2009

I attempt a reconstruction of Adam Smith's view of human nature as explicated in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). Smith's view of human conduct is neither functionalist nor reductionist, but interactionist. The moral autonomy of the individual, conscience, is neither made a function of public approval nor reduced to self-contained impulses of altruism and egoism. Smith does not see human conduct as a blend of independently defined impulses. Rather, conduct is unified, by the underpinning sentiment of sympathy.
Signifying Voices: Reading the “Adam Smith Problem”
Authors: Brown Vivienne
Published: July 2009

The “Adam Smith problem” has traditionally been concerned with the issue of authorial integrity: the issue of how a single author, Adam Smith, could have written two such apparently dissimilar, even contradictory, works as The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and The Wealth of Nations (WN). As the problem to be resolved was the single authorial origin of two such works, the perceived incompatibilities between them were explained in terms of Smith's intellectual biography – for example, Smith's travels to France, Smith's meetings with the physiocrats, or the mental incapacities of an aging man. The current consensus is that the Adam Smith problem is a “pseudo problem” and that Smith's works represent a unified project, but the same reference to authorial origins now provides thr opposite claim that “the same man” wrote both books (Raphael and Macfie, 1976, p. 20). Here the postulate of authorial integrity, “of stable integrated character, not subject to deep intellectual doubts or fissures” provides an assurance that such a man is unlikely to have written two entirely different books (Macfie, 1967, p. 76), an assurance underwritten by a coherent authorial intentionality that guarantees the consistency of the two works.
Roy Weintraub's Studies in Appraisal: Lakatosian Consolations or Something Else?
Authors: Salanti Andrea
Published: July 2009

As made manifest by Clower's (1975) comments on their “science fiction” nature, general equilibrium theories (GET) present such peculiar and puzzling features that the methodologist must perforce seek some specific methodological accommodation for this part of economic theory. The role played by such theories in contemporary economics is so fundamental (in the sense of Green, 1981) that the impossibility of appraising them by means of any version of falsificationism, and their patent lack of (excess) empirical content if approached with the conceptual devices of the methodology of scientific research programs (MSRP), have prompted several scholars interested in the methodology of economics (although from different points of view and for even more different purposes) to search for a reasonable way out.
Persuasion and Economic Efficiency:The Cost-Benefit Analysis of Banning Abortion
Authors: Nelson Julianne
Published: July 2009

How do economists persuade their readers that one policy is superior to another? A glance at the literature on welfare economics quickly provides the answer to this question: Economists enter policy debates armed with mathematical models, evaluating options on the basis of their consequences. Economists typically classify a policy change as a welfare (or “potential Pareto”) improvement with respect to the status quo if the gain realized by the winners exceeds the harm sustained by the losers. The best policy becomes the one that generates the highest net benefit.
Toward a Better Understanding of the Positive/Normative Distinction in Economics
Authors: Weston Samuel C.
Published: July 2009

This essay argues in favor of retaining the positive/normative distinction in economics, in spite of developments in methodology and epistemology that have cast doubt on the possibility of a “value-free” economics. The central claim is that it is worthwhile to distinguish between positive economic analysis and normative judgments, even if economics is viewed as being permeated with ethical values. This argument is presented without trying either to demonstrate that there is (or is not) a profound epistemological difference between science and ethics or to show that positive science can (or cannot) afford us access to objective reality.
The Postmodern Moments of F. A. Hayek'S Economics
Authors: Burczak Theodore A.
Published: July 2009

Postmodernism is often characterized, among other things, as the belief in the unattainability of objective truth and as a rejection of teleological and reductionist, or essentialist, forms of thought. For instance, in his provocative bookThe Rhetoric of Economics(1985), Donald McCloskey sketches the implications for economic methodology of Richard Rorty's (1979) rejection of the modernist quest for Truth, as represented by various rationalist and empiricist epistemologies. McCloskey describes modernist methodology as displaying a desire to predict and control, a search for objective–;which often means measurable–;knowledge, and an attempt to develop a value-free inquiry, among other characteristics (McCloskey, 1985, pp. 7-8). This “methodological correctness,” McCloske suggests, is discredited by the postmodern dissatisfaction with traditional epistemology. Thus, in place of the modernist belief in a rule-guided path to truth, he advocates a “free market” approach to knowledge, in which participants in the variety of theoretical conversations agree to be earnest and listen politely to one another.
Theory of the Firm
Authors: Dobson John
Published: July 2009

I carved a massive cake of beeswax into bits and rolled them in my hands until they softened … Going forward I carried wax along the line, and laid it thick on their ears. They tied me up, then, plumb amidships, back to the mast, lashed to the mast, and took themselves again to rowing. Soon, as we came smartly within hailing distance, the two Sirens, noting our fast ship off their point, made ready, and they sang … The lovely voices in ardor appealing over the water made me crave to listen, and I tried to say ‘Untie me!’ to the crew, jerking my brows; but they bent steady to the oars. (Homer, c. –900, pp. 227–28)
If Government is so Villainous, How come Government Officials don't seem like Villains?
Authors: Klein Daniel B.
Published: July 2009

At lunch one day a colleague and I had a friendly argument over occupational licensing. I attacked it for being anticompetitive, arguing that licensing boards raise occupational incomes by restricting entry, advertising, and commercialization. My colleague, while acknowledging anticompetitive aspects, affirmed the need for licensing on the grounds of protecting the consumer from frauds and quacks. In many areas of infrequent and specialized dealing, consumers are not able, ex ante or even ex post, to evaluate competence. I countered by suggesting voluntary means by which reputational problems might be handled and by returning to the offensive. I said that in fact the impetus for licensing usually comes from the practitioners, not their customers, and that licensing boards seldom devote their time to ferreting out incompetence but rather simply to prosecuting unlicensed practitioners. I mentioned cross-sectional findings, such as those on state licensure, prices, and occupational incomes. Overall, I characterized the professional establishment as a group of dastardly operators, who set the standards, write the codes, and enforce behavior to enhance their own material wellbeing - in brief, as venal rent-seekers.
The Impossibility of a Complete Methodological Individualist: Reduction When Knowledge Is Imperfect
Authors: Levy David M.
Published: July 2009

F. A. Hayek is uniquely responsible for his fellow economists grasping the importance of the decentralization of knowledge: as Hayek shows in his pathbreaking “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” knowledge nowhere exists as a coherent whole and to pretend otherwise is a most serious error. Hayek also shares responsibility for the popularity of a strong form of the methodological individualist research program which asserts that since collectives as such have no impact on the choices of individuals, investigators ought to purge any reliance on collectives from our analysis.
Social Discounting
Authors: Tenenbaum Susan
Published: July 2009

The social discount rate – the rate at which future benefit flows from government investment are discounted to present value – has been a frequent subject of technical debate among professional economists. From a broader perspective, however, the selection of an appropriate rate enjoins consideration of questions that define the very contours of our public philosophy. It carries implicit assumptions about the nature of citizenship, the relation between public and private spheres, and, most singularly, the status of a political society as it is located in time. A key determinant of intertemporal economic allocation, the social discount rate provides a unique registry of a polity's historical consciousness and perceptions of its intergenerational obligations. Yet the highly technical nature of the debate over the discount rate has proven inhospitable to scholars otherwise inclined to investigate its ethical dimensions. Some, notably A. K. Sen, have begun to address these philosophical issues, though much territory remains to be explored.
Rights, Indirect Utilitarianism, and Contractarianism
Authors: Hamlin Alan P.
Published: July 2009

Economic approaches to both social evaluation and decision-making are typically Paretian or utilitarian in nature and so display commitments to both welfarism and consequentialism. The contrast between the economic approach and any rights-based social philosophy has spawned a large literature that may be divided into two branches. The first is concerned with the compatibility of rights and utilitarianism (or Pare-tianism) seen as independent moral forces (e.g., the debate on the possibility of a Paretian liberal). This branch of the literature may be characterized as an example of the broader debate between the teleological and deontological approaches. The second is concerned with the possibility that substantial rights may be grounded in utilitarianism (or Pare-tianism) with the moral force of rights being derived from more basic commitments to welfarism and consequentialism. This branch of the literature may be characterized as an exploration of the flexibility of the teleological approach, and, in particular, its ability to give rise to views more normally associated with the deontological approach. This essay is concerned with the second branch of the literature.
Comment On D. Wade Hands, “Karl Popper and Economic Methodology: A New Look”
Authors: Blaug Mark
Published: July 2009

The central argument of this interesting paper is that Popper appears to be inconsistent: on the one hand, he preaches methodological monism-scientific method in the social sciences is identical to scientific method in the natural sciences-and on the other hand he advocates “situational analysis” as the unique method of the social sciences. Situational analysis is nothing but our old neoclassical friend, the rationality principle-individual maximizing behavior subject to constraints-and thus, Popper seems to be saying, neoclassical economics is the only valid kind of social science.
Marx And Disequilibrium in Market Socialist Relations of Production
Authors: Arnold N. Scott
Published: July 2009

One feature of socialism that has been little discussed in the recent revival of interest in Marx is the basic form of economic organization that will characterize such a society. Marx's view, to be documented in what follows, is that socialism would not have a market economy. This prediction should be a matter of some embarrassment or consternation to twentieth-century socialists outside of the Soviet bloc who claim a Marxist heritage. Despite the fact (or perhaps because of the fact) that some socialist regimes in the first half of this century did carry out a program of (largely) abolishing the market, the abolition of markets is no longer on the agenda for developed and developing countries. On the Left, anyway, some form of market socialism seems to be the preferred alternative; Yugoslavia is often pointed to as an imperfect real world exemplar of what market socialism might be like.
Keynes's Changing Conception of Probability
Authors: Bateman Bradley W.
Published: July 2009

One of the most actively discussed aspects of Keynes's thought during the last decade has been his concern with uncertainty and probability theory. As the concerns of current macroeconomic theorists have turned increasingly to the effects of expectations and uncertainty, interest has grown in the fact that Keynes was the author of A Treatise on Probability (1921) and that uncertainty plays a prominent role in Chapter 12 of The General Theory as well as in three 1937 papers in which he summarized The General Theory's main point. Not surprisingly, though, there has been very little agreement in this recent discussion about exactly what the significance of Keynes's early work in probability was to his later work as an economist, or about what the roles of uncertainty and expectations are in The General Theory.
The Logic of Electoral Preference: Response to Saraydar and Hudelson
Authors: Brennan Geoffrey , Lomasky Loren E.
Published: July 2009

How may we best understand the motivational structure that stands behind individuals' acts of voting? In “The Impartial Spectator Goes to Washington” we suggested that expressive concerns swamp narrowly consequential motivations, in contradistinction to normal market transactions in which the priority is reversed. A striking consequence of this fact is that individuals will be led to vote for outcomes that they would reject were they in a position to act decisively. In this regard we found the moral psychology Adam Smith develops in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) (and, to a lesser extent, in The Wealth of Nations) remarkably fecund in suggesting alternatives to what we call the standard theory of electoral behavior.
Weintraub's Aims: A Brief Rejoinder
Authors: Rosenberg Alexander
Published: July 2009

Weintraub is not really interested in whether economics is “science” or not. “Economists are not so unsophisticated as to think that calling economics a ‘science’ says anything about what economists do or should do” (1987, p. 140). But can it really be a matter of indifference to him whether the subject has the character of chemistry as opposed to literary criticism?
Further Thoughts on the Degeneration of Market Socialism:A Reply to Schweickart
Authors: Arnold N. Scott
Published: July 2009

David Schweickart has challenged a number of claims that are central to my argument that market socialism would probably degenerate into something only nominally distinguishable from capitalism. Chief among these is the claim that competitive pressures would force the workers in a worker-controlled firm to create pay and authority differentials that would make such firms structurally homologous to capitalist firms. Schweickart challenges this on two fronts: He argues that there is no good reason to believe that market forces under market socialism would create the pay and authority differentials characteristic of capitalism. He further argues that certain structural features of market socialism would insure that competition would not be as intense as it is under capitalism. Consequently, even if capitalistically structured firms were more efficient, it would not make much difference, since no sword of Damocles would hang over the heads of those firms whose workers prefer more collectivist methods of control. Let us consider each of these points in turn.
Cooperation and Contracts
Authors: Schick Frederic
Published: July 2009

In a conflict between two people, one person wants one thing and the other wants something else and they think they can't both have what they want. Suppose that what they want can only be the outcome of some joint action. Adam must do either y or z and Eve either y' or z' – here y-and-y' would be one joint action, y-and-z' would be another, and so on. Adam wants the outcome of his doing z while Eve is doing y'. Eve wants the outcome of her doing z' while Adam is doing y. Each thinks that these outcomes can't both be had.
Integrative Social Contracts Theory
Authors: Donaldson Thomas , Dunfee Thomas W.
Published: July 2009

Difficult moral issues in economic life, such as evaluating the impact of hostile takeovers and plant relocations or determining the obligations of business to the environment, constitute theraison d'etreof business ethics. Yet, while the ultimate resolution of such issues clearly requires detailed, normative analysis, a shortcoming of business ethics is that to date it has failed to develop an adequate normative theory.1The failing is especially acute when it results in an inability to provide a basis for fine-grained analyses of issues. Both general moral theories and stakeholder theory seem incapable of expressing the moral complexity necessary to provide practical normative guidance for many business ethics contexts.
Real Patterns and the Ontological Foundations of Microeconomics
Authors: Ross Don
Published: July 2009

Most philosophical accounts of the foundations of economics have assumed that economics is intended to be an empirical science concerned with human behaviour, though they have, of course, differed over the extent to which it has been or can be successful as such an enterprise. A prominent source of dissent against this consensus is Alexander Rosenberg. In his recent book, Rosenberg summarizes and completes his statement of a position that he has been developing for some time (Rosenberg, 1992a). He argues that although economists evaluate one another's work according to shared and rigorous standards of adequacy, these standards are strictly internal, like those of mathematics, instead of being derived from discoveries about contingent relationships between theoretical statements and empirical facts. Economics, that is to say, is essentially conceptual rather than empirical inquiry. In the following discussion, I will provide grounds for resisting Rosenberg's conclusion. The point of this criticism, however, is not mainly negative. Most of the historical preoccupations of the philosophy of economics, like those of the philosophy of science in general, have been epistemological. Careful attention to Rosenberg's argument, however, redirects our attention to ontological questions about the objects of economics, and this redirection, I will maintain, is to be welcomed. I will argue that while the majority of philosophers of economics is correct, as against Rosenberg, in regarding economics as an empirical science, the conventional view as to the identity of its empirical objects should be substantially revised under the pressure of Rosenberg's criticisms. My critical analysis of the implications of Rosenberg's work for the ontological commitments of economics is intended to furnish one line of argument towards my own conception of the objects of economics. This conception, which is still preliminary in many respects, will be briefly sketched toward the end of the present paper; a detailed account of it is given in Ross and LaCasse (1993).
The Common Prior Assumption in Economic Theory
Authors: Morris Stephen
Published: July 2009

Why is (it that) common priors are implicit or explicit in the vast majority of the differential information literature in economics and game theory? Why has the economic community been unwilling, in practice, to accept and actually use the idea of truly personal probabilities in much the same way that it did accept the idea of personal utility functions? After all, in (Savage's expected utility theory), both the utilities and probabilities are derived separately for each decision maker. Why were the utilities accepted as personal, and the probabilities not?
Pure and Utilitarian Prisoner's Dilemmas
Authors: Kuhn Steven T. , Moresi Serge
Published: July 2009

The prisoner 's dilemma game (henceforth, PD) has acquired large literatures in several disciplines. It is surprising, therefore, that a good definition of the game is hard to find. Typically an author relates a story about captured criminals or military rivals, provides a particular payoff matrix and asserts that the PD is characterized, or illustrated, by that matrix. In the few cases in which characterizing conditions are given, the conditions, and the motivations for them, do not always agree with each other or with the paradigm examples elsewhere. In this paper we describe several varieties of PD's. In particular, we suggest there are two distinctions among PD's with philosophical significance, the pure/impure and the utilitarian/nonutilitarian distinctions. In the first section, we explain and characterize the two distinctions. In the second, we discuss an issue of moral philosophy that illustrates the significance of the former.
Reading Adam Smith's Texts on Morals and Wealth
Authors: Brown Vivienne
Published: July 2009

In his Comment ‘Adam Smith on the Morality of the Pursuit of Fortune’, Richard Arlen Kleer accepts much of the argument in my article ‘Signifying Voices’ (Brown, 1991) but insists that I have ‘gone too far’ (Kleer, 1993). Kleer agrees that there is a moral hierarchy in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) where benevolence and self-command are ranked higher than justice and prudence, but he is uneasy with the conclusion that economic activity and the pursuit of gain are ‘amoral’ activities and insists that they do have a significant moral standing. In addition, although Kleer accepts a good deal of the stylistic analysis, again he is uneasy with the results that are derived from it. This reply will take each of these aspects in turn.
A Communitarian Utility Function and its Social and Economic Implications
Authors: Kapur Basant K.
Published: July 2009

The term ‘communitarianism’ is often identified with ‘altruism’: an individual is taken to be communitarian-minded if he or she is concerned with the well-being of others, and not only with his or her own well-being. While communitarianism may embrace altruism, it is most appositely viewed as having a broader connotation. Consider, for example, the puzzle of voting behaviour, discussed by Amitai Etzioni (1988) and many others (including, very recently, Aldrich (1997)). Casting one's vote entails a cost, albeit usually a small one: however, if there are large numbers voting, then one's own vote has a negligible effect on the outcome. An altruist might therefore rationally refrain from voting (just as an entirely self-interested individual would), since he incurs a cost, and neither he nor anybody else receives a benefit. And yet, millions of people the world over regularly vote in elections. Other examples could also be given.

‘Group-oriented’ behaviour has been the focus of a number of recent studies. C. Clague (1993), for example, examines the roles of guilt and shame in discouraging tax evasion, and informally discusses how social influences may affect the strength of these sentiments. R. Naylor and M. Cripps (1993) examine the influence of social custom on individuals' propensity to join trade unions, while P. Nelson (1994) argues that in choosing which party to vote for people assign some weight to the preferences of persons they associate with.
Resource Egalitarianism and the Limits to Basic Income
Authors: Williams Andrew
Published: July 2009

In his widely-discussed book, Real Freedom for All, Philippe Van Parijs argues that justice requires the provision of a universal, unconditional basic income. Some critics reject that conclusion on the grounds that it violates requirements of reciprocity or prohibitions on exploitation, free-riding and parasitism. This paper explores a less familiar critique, which operates within the same resource egalitarian parameters as Van Parijs's argument, and leaves unchallenged his conviction that justice requires a basic income. Instead the paper suggests two reasons to doubt his ambitious claims about its magnitude. First, the paper argues that if envy elimination is the fundamental egalitarian aim then Van Parijs's argument for boosting basic income by including jobs within the class of external assets to be equalized is unsuccessful. Second, it argues that Van Parijs fails to show that the provision of basic income should not be constrained by a more restrictive principle for correcting inequalities in personal resources than his favored compensatory norm. Before defending these criticisms, two preliminary sections describe Van Parijs's distributive principles and his central argument for basic income.
A Neo-Kantian Critique of Von Mises's Epistemology
Authors: Barrotta Pierluigi
Published: July 2009

More than many other Austrians, Mises tried to found aprioristic methodology on a well defined and developed epistemology. Although references to Kant are scattered rather unsystematically throughout his works, he nevertheless used an unequivocal Kantian terminology. He explicitly defended the existence of ‘a priori knowledge’, ‘synthetic a priori propositions’, ‘the category of action’, and so forth.
Problems with Realism in Economics
Authors: Hausman Daniel M.
Published: July 2009

This essay attempts to distinguish the pressing issues for economists and economic methodologists concerning realism in economics from those issues that are of comparatively slight importance. In particular I shall argue that issues concerning the goals of science are of considerable interest in economics, unlike issues concerning the evidence for claims about unobservables, which have comparatively little relevance. In making this argument, this essay raises doubts about the two programs in contemporary economic methodology that raise the banner of realism. In particular I argue that the banner makes it more difficult to relate the concerns of those who wave it (Tony Lawson and Uskali Mäki) to those of other methodologists. Although this essay argues that many of the debates in this century between scientific realists and their opponents are not relevant to economics, it does not attack scientific realism, and it does not urge economists or economic methodologists to reject it.
Equilibrium and Disequilibrium in Economic Theory: A Confrontation of the Classical, Marshallian and Walras-Hicksian Conceptions
Authors: De Vroey Michel
Published: July 2009

When the economic theory of the last decades becomes a subject of reflection for historians of economic theory, a striking feature which they will have to explain is the demise of the disequilibrium concept. Previously, economists had no qualms concerning the view that the market or the economy was exhibiting disequilibria. Amongst many possible quotations, the following, drawn from Viner's well-known article on Marshall, illustrates that:
What Use Is Empirical Confirmation?
Authors: Miller David
Published: July 2009

1. Despite the plain fact that there is nothing in this world that can be proved without reliance on some assumption or another (perhaps only the assumption that the laws of logic are correct), there is an inalienable difference between an argument that begins by assuming what it is designed to establish and one that begins by assuming the contradictory of what it is designed to establish. Arguments of the first kind are uncontroversially acknowledged to be circular, or question-begging; though valid they achieve nothing. Those of the second kind conform to the classical pattern of reductio ad absurdum or indirect proof. A typical example is the proof of the irrationality of √2, which begins by assuming that for some integral m, n the identity m2/n2 = 2, and (using some trite principles of number theory) arrives at a contradiction. Nothing whatever is established or justified by arguments of the first kind, even granted the truth of all the other assumptions (if any), and the validity of the rules of inference; while the second may establish that, if those assumptions are true (and the rules of inference employed valid), then the additional assumption (that √2 is rational) is false.
Economics as Separate and Inexact
Authors: Hausman Daniel M.
Published: July 2009

The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics (ISSE) offers an overview of standard microeconomics and general equilibrium theory. These are not the whole of orthodox economics, and orthodox economics is not the whole of economics. But orthodox economics dominates the profession, and the theoretical core of microeconomics and general equilibrium theory – what I called ‘equilibrium theory’ – is central to most orthodox economics. Unlike many methodological works, which focus almost exclusively on the empirical problems of equilibrium theory and its applications, ISSE is also concerned with the structure, strategy and heuristics of equilibrium theorizing, and it attempts to link questions about theory appraisal to questions about structure and strategy. It is addressed both to philosophers interested in epistemological questions posed by the social sciences and to economists interested in reflecting on and improving their discipline. Its inspiration lies in the work of John Stuart Mill.
An ‘Inexact’ Philosophy of Economics?
Authors: Backhouse Roger E.
Published: July 2009

The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics(ISSE) (Hausman, 1992) represents the most ambitious attempt to provide a systematic account of economic methodology since the first edition of Blaug'sThe Methodology of Economics(1980). As such, it has been the subject of extensive critical commentary (for example, Blaug, 1992b; Backhouse, 1995; Miller, 1996; Hahn, 1996; Mäki, 1996). For all the attention it has received, however, some important aspects of the book's thesis have not been developed properly. Two important ones are (1) what might be called, following the terminology used in the experimental economics literature, the ‘framing effect’ of Hausman's definition of economics, and (2) the significance of Hausman's claim that economists are committed to developing economics as a ‘separate’ science. To understand these points it is important to make explicit the position from which Hausman approaches the philosophy of science.