Economic Methodology

MARCEL BOUMANS is Associate Professor and Co-director of the faculty research programme History and Methodology of Economics at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. JOHN B. DAVIS is Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics and Co-director of the faculty research programme History and Methodology of Economics at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Professor of Economics at Marquette University, USA.

The Received View of Science Focus 1.1 Axiomatization Focus 1.2 Models Focus 1.3 Formalism Methodologies of Positive Economics Focus 2.1 Methodologies before Friedman Focus 2.2 Measurement Focus 2.3 Experiments Popper's Logic of Discovery Focus 3.1 The Duhem-Quine Thesis Focus 3.2 Popper's Situational Analysis Focus 3.3 Testing Kuhn and Lakatos Focus 4.1 Research Programs in Economics Focus 4.2 Scientific Revolutions in Economics? Focus 4.3 Facts The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge Focus 5.1 Economics as a Discipline Focus 5.2 Case Study Research Focus 5.3 Feminist Philosophy of Science and Feminist Political Economy Rhetoric, Postmodernism, and Pluralism Focus 6.1 Analogy and Metaphor Focus 6.2 Paul Feyerabend Focus 6.3 Realism and Causal Explanation in Economics Value Judgements in Economics Focus 7.1 Logical Positivism and Ordinalist Utility Theory Focus 7.2 Neutral Science? Focus 7.3 Naturalistic Legitimation Glossary