Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T17:34:16.105Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Efficiency Question in Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Robert Northcott
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Much philosophical attention has been devoted to whether economic models explain and more generally to how scientific models represent. Yet there is an issue more practically important to economics than either of these, which I label the efficiency question: regardless of how exactly models represent, or of whether their role is explanatory or something else, is current modeling practice an efficient way to achieve these goals or should research efforts be redirected? In addition to showing how the efficiency question has been relatively neglected, I give two examples of the kind of analysis it requires.

Type
Economics
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 5 , December 2018 , pp. 1140 - 1151
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I thank Anna Alexandrova and two anonymous referees for useful feedback. I also thank Richard Urwin, my fellow PSA symposiasts Lawrence Boland, Jennifer Jhun, and James Weatherall, as well as the symposium audience.

References

Alexandrova, Anna. 2008. “Making Models Count.” Philosophy of Science 75:383–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexandrova, Anna, and Northcott, Robert. 2009. “Progress in Economics: Lessons from the Spectrum Auctions.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics, ed. Kincaid, Harold and Ross, Don, 306–37. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Angrist, Joshua, and Pischke, Jörn-Steffen. 2010. “The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics: How Better Research Design Is Taking the Con Out of Econometrics.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 24:3–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashworth, Tony. 1980. Trench Warfare, 1914–1918. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Axelrod, Robert. 1984. The Evolution of Co-operation. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Aydinonat, Emrah. 2008. The Invisible Hand in Economics: How Economists Explain Unintended Social Consequences. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biddle, Jeff, and Hamermesh, Daniel. 2016. “Theory and Measurement: Emergence, Consolidation and Erosion of a Consensus.” Working Paper 22253, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy. 1989. Nature’s Capacities and Their Measurement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy 1999. “The Vanity of Rigor in Economics: Theoretical Models and Galilean Experiments.” Discussion Paper DP 43/99, Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences, London.Google Scholar
Chakravartty, Anjan. 2010. “Informational versus Functional Theories of Scientific Representation.” Synthese 172:197–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elster, Jon. 1988. “The Nature and Scope of Rational-Choice Explanation.” In Science in Reflection, ed. Ullmann-Margalit, Edna, 51–65. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forber, Patrick. 2010. “Confirmation and Explaining How Possible.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science C 41:32–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frigg, Roman. 2006. “Scientific Representation and the Semantic View of Theories.” Theoria 55:49–65.Google Scholar
Grüne-Yanoff, Till. 2009. “Learning from Minimal Economic Models.” Erkenntnis 70:81–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grüne-Yanoff, Till 2013. “Appraising Non-representational Models.” Philosophy of Science 80:850–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamermesh, Daniel. 2013. “Six Decades of Top Economics Publishing: Who and How?” Journal of Economic Literature 51:162–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knuuttila, Tarja. 2005. “Models, Representation, and Mediation.” Philosophy of Science 72 (Proceedings): 1260–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knuuttila, Tarja 2011. “Modelling and Representing: An Artefactual Approach to Model-Based Representation.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 42:262–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuorikoski, Jaakko, Lehtinen, Aki, and Marchionni, Caterina. 2010. “Economic Modelling as Robustness Analysis.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61:541–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawson, Tony. 1997. Economics and Reality. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mäki, Uskali. 1992. “On the Method of Isolation in Economics.” Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 26:319–54.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1843. A System of Logic. London: Parker.Google Scholar
Morgan, Mary, and Morrison, Margaret. 1999. Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Northcott, Robert. Forthcoming a. “Economic Theory and Empirical Science.” In Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Economics, ed. Conrad Heilmann and Julian Reiss. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Northcott, Robert Forthcoming b. “When Are Purely Predictive Models Best?” Disputatio.Google Scholar
Northcott, Robert, and Alexandrova, Anna. 2013. “It’s Just a Feeling: Why Economic Models Do Not Explain.” Journal of Economic Methodology 20:262–67.Google Scholar
Northcott, Robert, and Alexandrova, Anna 2015. “Prisoner’s Dilemma Doesn’t Explain Much.” In The Prisoner’s Dilemma, ed. Peterson, Martin, 64–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reiss, Julian. 2008. Error in Economics: Towards a More Evidence-Based Methodology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rodrik, Dani. 2015. Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Alex. 1992. Economics: Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Suarez, Mauricio. 2015. “Deflationary Representation, Inference, and Practice.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 49:36–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ylikoski, Petri, and Aydinonat, Emrah. 2014. “Understanding with Theoretical Models.” Journal of Economic Methodology 21:19–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar