Facts and Fictions in Economics

Author: Maikai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features: Is economics truly a respected, useful, and fact-based discipline, or just an intellectual game where economists create many models? This book gathers scholars with high prestige in their respective fields to conduct a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the nature and limitations of current economic knowledge. The authors discuss the relationship between economic models and reality, the fundamental nature of economic phenomena, and the institutional issues of the discipline of economics from the perspectives of methodology, semantics, ontology, rhetoric, sociology, and scientific economics.
Fact or fiction? Is economics truly a respected, useful, and fact-based discipline, or just an intellectual game where economists create many models? This book primarily discusses this question from three related perspectives: economic models, the nature of the economy, and the social structure of the discipline of economics. The corresponding key questions are: What is the relationship between economic models and reality? How does the part of the world related to economics operate? How does the institutional structure of economics affect its orientation toward facts or fiction? Further questions will arise regarding these issues and their interrelationships. If economic models and economic facts are the results of social construction, can the possibility of models reflecting the real world be credible? Under what conditions would this possibility be realized? This book gathers scholars with high prestige in their respective fields to conduct a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the nature and limitations of current economic knowledge.