This book seeks to advance social economic analysis, economic methodology, and the history of economic thought in the context of twenty-first-century scholarship and socio-economic concerns. Bringing together carefully selected chapters by leading scholars it examines the central contributions that John Davis has made to various areas of scholarship. In recent decades, criticisms of mainstream economics have rekindled interest in a number of areas of scholarly inquiry that were frequently ignored by mainstream economic theory and practice during the second half of the twentieth century, including social economics, economic methodology and history of economic thought. This book contributes to a growing literature on the revival of these areas of scholarship and highlights the pivotal role that John Davis’s work has played in the ongoing revival. Together, the international panel of contributors show how Davis’s insights in complexity theory, identity, and stratification are key to understanding a reconfigured economic methodology. They also reveal that Davis’s willingness to draw from multiple academic disciplines gives us a platform for interrogating mainstream economics and provides the basis for a humane yet scientific alternative. This unique volume will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers across social economics, history of economic thought, economic methodology, political economy and philosophy of social science.

The Handbook of Historical Economics guides students and researchers through a quantitative economic history that uses fully up-to-date econometric methods. The book's coverage of statistics applied to the social sciences makes it invaluable to a broad readership. As new sources and applications of data in every economic field are enabling economists to ask and answer new fundamental questions, this book presents an up-to-date reference on the topics at hand. Provides an historical outline of the two cliometric revolutions, highlighting the similarities and the differences between the two Surveys the issues and principal results of the "second cliometric revolution" Explores innovations in formulating hypotheses and statistical testing, relating them to wider trends in data-driven, empirical economics

This book is an examination of the nature of economic explanation. The opening chapters introduce current thinking in the philosophy of science and review the literature on methodology. Professor Blaug then turns to the troublesome question of the logical status of welfare economics, giving the reader an understanding of the outstanding issues in the methodology of economics. This is followed by a series of case studies of leading economic controversies, which shows how controversies in economics may be illuminated by paying attention to questions of methodology. A final chapter draws the strands together and gives the author's view of what is wrong with modern economics. This book is a revised and updated edition of a classic work on the methodology of economics, in which Professor Blaug develops his discussion of the latest developments in macroeconomics, general equilibrium theory and international trade theory. A new section on the rationality postulate is also added.

Shows how economics was once rich, diverse, multidimensional and pluralistic. Details how political economy became economics through the desocialisation and dehistoricisation of the dismal science.

In 21 prescriptive rather than descriptive treatments, well known academic economists set out how they think the discipline should be practiced both internally and in relation to other fields and arenas of society. They explore economics as a historical process and as a public science, realism in model buildings, social science, normative and positive aspects, extracting information from data, and worthwhile economics. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

A multidisciplinary reference in which over 100 commissioned essays provide details of topics and issues that have developed in recent decades and introduce a variety of emerging themes that economic methodologists have begun to explore. The encyclopedia- type articles discuss such topics as aggregation, evolutionary economics, Otto Neurath, survey methods, Thorstein Veblen, selectionist arguments, the marginalist controversy, game theory, economic sociology, and causality. Each includes an extensive bibliography. Practicing economists and students of the philosophy or history of economics might find useful information and an entry into deeper investigation. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The experimental approach in economics is a driving force behind some of the most exciting developments in the field. The 'experimental revolution' was based on a series of bold philosophical premises which have remained until now mostly unexplored. This book provides the first comprehensive analysis and critical discussion of the methodology of experimental economics, written by a philosopher of science with expertise in the field. It outlines the fundamental principles of experimental inference in order to investigate their power, scope and limitations. The author demonstrates that experimental economists have a lot to gain by discussing openly the philosophical principles that guide their work, and that philosophers of science have a lot to learn from their ingenious techniques devised by experimenters in order to tackle difficult scientific problems.