Philosophy 345/Economics 319

The Philosophy and Methodology of Economics

Reading List

Required text:  It is essential that you prepare the required readings before each class.  All required readings are electronically accessible on Duke Box.  Students registered for the class (including waitlisted students) should have received an email with a link to the folder in Duke Box.  If you have not received such a link, please email me and I will send it.)  Consult the Timetable & Assignments link on the course website to see when readings are due. 

0. Background
These readings any in this section are not used specifically but will help you to get your bearings in the course.  You should read them on your own as soon as possible in the course.

  • Daniel Hausman, “Economic Methodology in a Nutshell,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 3(2), 1989, pp. 115-127.
  • Daniel Hausman, “Appendix:  An Introduction to Philosophy of Science,” The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 281-329. 

The following short book is not available in the course readings online, but can be borrowed from the library or purchased from Amazon.  It gives a good overview of the field of methodology and the philosophy of economics.

  • Marcel Boumans and John Davis, Economic Methodology:  Understanding Economics as a Science.  Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

1. A Real Economic Problem

  • Charles Brown, “Minimum Wage Laws:  Are They Overrated?”  Journal of Economic Perspectives 2(3), Summer 1988, pp. 133-145.
  • Alan Manning, “The Truth About the Minimum Wage:  Neither Job Killer Nor Cure-All,” Foreign Affairs, January-February 2018, pp. 126-134.

2. Values in Economics.

  • A. (i) Mark Blaug. “The Positive-Normative Distinction,’ in John Davis, D. Wade Hands and Uskali Mäki, editors, The Handbook of Economic Methodology.  Cheltenham:  Edward Elgar, 1998, pp. 370-374.

        (ii)  Fritz Machlup, “Positive and Normative Economics:  An Analysis of Ideas,” in Robert Heilbroner, editor, Economic Means and Social Ends:  Essays in Political Economics, 1969, pp. 99-129.
  • B. Julian Reiss (2017) “Fact-Value Entanglement in Positive Economics,” Journal of Economic Methodology, 24(2), pp. 134-149.

3. Economic Rationality

  • A. Karl Brunner and William H. Meckling, “The Perception of Man and the Conception of Government,” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 9(No. 1, Part 1), February 1977, pp. 70-85.
  • B. Jon Elster, “The Nature and Scope of Rational Choice,” in E. Ullmann-Margalit, editor, Science in Reflection, 1988, pp. 51-65. in Caldwell I pp, 425-439.
  • C. F.A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35(4), pp. 519-530.

4. Logic

  • Hoover, “Notes on Logic.”
    [These notes are a supplement to the lecture on Logic.]

5. Economic Models

  • A. (i) Marcel Boumans, “Models,” in John Davis, Alain Marciano and Jochen Runde, The Elgar Companion to Economics and Philosophy.  Cheltenham:  Edward Elgar, 2004, pp. 260-282.
        (ii) Mary Morgan, “Models as a Method of Inquiry,” in Morgan, The World in the Model:  How Economists Think.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch. 1, pp. 1-38.
  • B. Allan Gibbard and Hal Varian, “Economic Models,” Journal of Philosophy 75(11), 1978, pp. 664-677.
  • C. Robert Sugden, “Credible Worlds:  The Status of Theoretical Models in Economics,” Journal of Economic Methodology 7(1), 2000, pp. 1-31.

6.  Economic Explanation

  • A. (i) Karl Popper, “The Rationality Principle,” in David Miller, ed., A Pocket Popper.  London:  Fontana, 1983.
        (ii) Noretta Koertge, “The Methodological Status of Popper’s Rationality Principle,” Theory and Decision 10(1), 1979, pp. 83-95.
  • B. (i) Karl Popper, “Science:  Conjectures and Refuations,” in Conjectures and Refutations.  London:  Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963, pp. 33-58. 
        (ii) Bruce Caldwell, “Clarifying Popper,” Journal of Economic Literature 29(1), March 1991, pp. 1-33.
  • C. Nancy Cartwright, “Ceteris Paribus Laws and the Socio-economic Machine,” in the Dappled World.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1999, ch. 6 (pp. 137-151).
  • D. John Dupré, “Economics without Mechanism,” in Uskali Mäki, editor, The Economic World View, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 308-334.

7. Experiments in Economics

  • A. Mary Morgan, “Model Experiments,” in Morgan, The World in the Model:  How Economists Think.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch. 7, pp. 256-300.
  • B. Smith, “Economics in the Laboratory,” in Daniel Hausman, editor, The Philosophy of Economics:  An Anthology, ch. 18, pp. 334-356.
  • C. Menno Rol and Nancy Cartwright, “Warranting the Use of Causal Claims:   A Non-trivial Case for Interdisciplinarity,” Theoria 74, 2012, pp. 189-202.

8. Econometrics

  • A. Kevin D. Hoover, The Methodology of Empirical Macroeconomics, Ch. 1, “Some Methodological Problems in Macroeconomics”; and Ch. 2, “Are There Macroeconomic Laws,” Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2001.  [Note: the meat of this reading is in Chapter 2, but the short Chapter 1 is necessary background to Chapter 2.]
  • B. Kevin, D. Hoover, “The Role of Hypothesis Testing in the Molding of Econometric Models,” Erasmus Journal for the Philosophy of Economics 6(2), Autumn 2013, pp. 42-65.
  • C. Kevin D. Hoover, “Econometrics as Observation: The Lucas Critique, Causality and the Nature of Econometric Inference,” Journal of Economic Methodology, June 1994.

Just What Is Economics After All?

  • A. John Stuart Mill, “On the Definition of Political Economy and the Method of Investigation Proper to It,” in Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, 1844.
  • B. Alfred Marshall, “The Present Position of Economics,” 1885 [excerpts].
  • C. Lionel Robbins, The Nature and Significance of Economic Science (Part I, Part II), 2nd edition 1935 (first edition 1932).

10. Friedman 1953:  The One Methodology Paper Every Economists Knows

  • A. Milton Friedman, “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” in Friedman, Essays in Positive Economics.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1953. 
  • B. (i) Daniel Hausman “Why Look Under the Hood?” in Essays on Philosophy and Economic Methodology.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2008, ch. 5, pp. 70-74. 
        (ii) Kevin Hoover, “Milton Friedman’s Stance:  The Methodology of Causal Realism,” in Uskali Mäki, editor, The Methodology of Positive Economics: Milton Friedman’s Essay Fifty Years Later.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 303-320.