The Future of the Philosophy of Economics

Constanze Binder is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on the area where political philosophy and economics meet, in particular on social-choice approaches to justice, moral limitations of markets, the analysis of freedom, and the application of the capability approach to (economic) policy evaluation. Conrad Heilmann is Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Economics, a Co-Director of the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics, and Coordinator of the Research Master in Philosophy and Economics, at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His research focuses on different topics in philosophy of economics, such as the foundations of decision and game theory, intertemporal decision-making, and measurement. Jack Vromen is Professor of Philosophy, Academic Director of the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics, and Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His research concentrates on philosophy of economics, and more particularly on areas where economics and theories of evolution overlap, such as evolutionary economics, the evolution of social preferences, and neuroeconomics.

Introduction: The future of the philosophy of economics Part I: Philosophy of Economic Policy-making 1. Policy-making in developing countries: from prediction to planning 2. Can an evidential account justify relying on preferences for well-being policy? Part II: Decision Theory and Philosophy of Economics 3. Representation theorems and the semantics of decision-theoretic concepts 4. Rationality and the Bayesian paradigm Part III: Ethics and the Philosophy of Economics 5. On the meaning of non-welfarism in Kolm’s ELIE model of income redistribution 6. Rethinking the ethics of incentives Part IV: New Questions in Economic Methodology 7. Two approaches to reasoning from evidence or what econometrics can learn from biomedical research 8. Expertise and institutional design in economic committees