nep-hpe New Economics Papers on History and Philosophy of Economics
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Issue of 2019‒12‒02
fifteen papers chosen by
Erik Thomson (University of Manitoba)
http://ep.repec.org/pth72
[Selections by Humberto Barreto for SHOE list.]
This issue of NEP is sponsored by the editors and the publisher of the Journal
of Econometrics. They invite you to their ASSA 2020 Panel “Econometrics in the
21st Century, Challenges and Opportunities”, on January 4, 2020, from 10:15 to
12:15 at the Marriott Marquis, San Diego, CA. More at http://o.repec.org/0238.
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1. Antitrust and Economic History: The Historic Failure of the Chicago
School of Antitrust
Mark Glick
2. Journal of the History of Economic Thought Preprints - Economic
Analysis of Education in Post-War America: New insights from Theodore
Schultz and John Kenneth Galbraith
CHIRAT, alexandre; , Le Chapelain Charlotte
3. Monism in modern science: The case of (micro-)economics
Beckenbach, Frank
4. The Focus of Academic Economics: Before and After the Crisis
Ernest Aigner; Matthias Aistleitner; Florentin Glotzl; Jakob Kapeller
5. On the Function of Beliefs in Strategic Social Interactions.
Arnaud Wolff
6. Citation Patterns in Economics and Beyond
Matthias Aistleitner; Jakob Kapeller; Stefan Steinerberger
7. Journal of the History of Economic Thought Preprints – A
SECOND-GENERATION STRUCTURALIST TRANSFORMATION PROBLEM: THE RISE OF THE
INERTIAL INFLATION HYPOTHESIS
de Carvalho, Andre Roncaglia
8. Divided we stand? Professional consensus and political conflict in
academic economics
Beyer, Karl M.; Pühringer, Stephan
9. A century of economics and engineering at Stanford
Cherrier, Beatrice; Saïdi, Aurélien
10. Making Identity Count: UK 1960
Vucetic, Srdjan
11. Economic experiments and inference
Hirschauer, Norbert; Gruener, Sven; Mußhoff, Oliver; Becker, Claudia
12. Economics from the Top Down: Does Hierarchy Unify Economic Theory?
Fix, Blair
13. Léon Walras and Alfred Marshall: Microeconomic Rational Choice or
Human and Social Nature?
Richard Arena; Katia Caldari
15. Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five
James J. Heckman; Sidharth Moktan
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1. Antitrust and Economic History: The Historic Failure of the Chicago
School of Antitrust
Mark Glick (University of Utah)
This paper presents an historical analysis of the antitrust laws. Its
central contention is that the history of antitrust can only be understood
in light of U.S. economic history and the succession of dominant economic
policy regimes that punctuated that history. The antitrust laws and a subset
of other related policies have historically focused on the negative
consequences resulting from the rise, expansion, and dominance of big
business. Antitrust specifically uses competition as its tool to address
these problems. The paper traces the evolution of the emergence, growth and
expansion of big business over six economic eras: the Gilded Age, the
Progressive Era, the New Deal, the post-World War II Era, the 1970s, and the
era of neoliberalism. It considers three policy regimes: laissez-faire
during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, the New Deal, policy regime
from the Depression through the early 1970s, and the neoliberal policy
regime that dominates today and includes the Chicago School of antitrust.
The principal conclusion of the paper is that the activist antitrust
policies associated with the New Deal that existed from the late 1930s to
the 1960s resulted in far stronger economic performance than have the
policies of the Chicago School that have dominated antitrust policy since
the 1980s.
Keywords: New Brandeis School, Antitrust economics, Antitrust law,
Neoliberal Economic Theory, Chicago School Economics, History of Antitrust
law
Date: 2019–04
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:thk:wpaper:95&r=hpe
2. Journal of the History of Economic Thought Preprints - Economic
Analysis of Education in Post-War America: New insights from Theodore
Schultz and John Kenneth Galbraith
CHIRAT, alexandre; , Le Chapelain Charlotte
Human capital theory has suffered much criticism. The filter theory of
education (Arrow 1973), the theory of education as a “signal” (Spence 1973)
and the theory of “screening” (Stiglitz 1975), for instance, have seriously
challenged it from within mainstream economics, and heavy criticism has also
come from other paradigms, with Bailly (2016) recently documenting the
critique from the radical school. Within this set of ideas that flourished
in the post-WWII period and challenged human capital theory, John Kenneth
Galbraith’s analysis of the dynamics of the education process is often
neglected. In his original institutionalist and firm-based approach to the
evolution of education, Galbraith placed great emphasis on the issue of the
requirements of the planning system when he tackled the issue of human
capital investment. More surprisingly – since he is unanimously recognized
as the “founding father” of the “human capital revolution” – Theodore
Schultz himself developed a substantial critique of human capital theory
that shares some ground with Galbraith’s. The aim of this contribution is to
provide new insights into the history of post-WWII ideas in the field of
economics of education by reviewing Schultz’s and Galbraith’s respective
analyses of education and highlighting their proximities. Both authors raise
doubts regarding the idea that the aggregation of individual choices must be
regarded as the relevant generative mechanism of the dynamic of education
and the basis of the allocation of education resources. Consequently, both
question the equivocal concept of student sovereignty.
Date: 2019–01–21
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:jyt3z&r=hpe
3. Monism in modern science: The case of (micro-)economics
Beckenbach, Frank
This elaboration starts by deciphering modern science as a social subsystem
being loosely coupled to the rest of society (section 2.1). Additionally,
the way in which modern (monistic) economics was generated within this
subsystem will be sketched (section 2.2). This will be contrasted with the
views that this monism would have been eroded in recent times due to imports
from other sciences into economics. Conclusions as regards the necessity as
well as the mode of pluralism will be drawn from this discussion (section
2.3). Picking up the disputable complexity reductions involved in the
dominating (monistic) approach in economics other ways to deal with
complexity inherent in the economy will be dealt with in section 3. Here a
stepwise exit from the established standard approach in economics is
suggested for the microeconomic syllabus consisting in the first step of an
introductory pluralistic course and in the second step of a heterodox
advanced course. Conclusions and perspectives resulting from such an
approach are discussed in the final section.
JEL: A10 A12 A14 A20 B20 B59 D00
Keywords: Monism,science,microconomics,pluralism,neoclassical economics
Date: 2019
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cuswps:oek49&r=hpe
4. The Focus of Academic Economics: Before and After the Crisis
Ernest Aigner (Vienna University of Economics and Business); Matthias
Aistleitner (Johannes Kepler University); Florentin Glotzl (Vienna
University of Economics and Business); Jakob Kapeller (Johannes Kepler
University)
Has the global financial crisis of 2007ff had a visible impact on the
economics profession? To answer this question we employ a bibliometric
approach and compare the content and orientation of economic literature
before and after the crisis with reference to two different samples: A
large-scale sample consisting of more than 440,000 articles published
between 1956 and 2016 and a smaller sample of 400 top-cited papers before
and after the crisis. Our results suggest that unlike the Great Depression
of the 1930s the current financial crisis did not lead to any major
theoretical or methodological changes in contemporary economics, although
the topic of financial instability received increased attention after the
crisis.
JEL: A14 B20 B26 G01 N00 N01
Keywords: crisis, economics profession, economic journals, keyword
analysis, paradigmatic development
Date: 2018–05
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:thk:wpaper:75&r=hpe
5. On the Function of Beliefs in Strategic Social Interactions.
Arnaud Wolff
We review the way beliefs have traditionally been formalized in
game-theoretic settings, and argue that this formalization has its limits,
especially in the realm of strategic social interactions. Normative game
theory, with its emphasis on equilibrium concepts and its concern about how
rational and intelligent players should play, has left little room for a
formal characterization of the role of players’ beliefs. Given that beliefs
determine play, we argue that a case can be made for a deeper understanding
of their nature. We draw on the literature in evolutionary psychology and
biology to decipher underlying, not readily apparent, incentives that might
influence belief adoption. In fact, we take the view that beliefs are
themselves subject to incentives, and that agents’ beliefs may therefore
take on a predictable form if we are able to decipher the underlying
incentives that they face. This predictable form might then be used to
justify specific modelling assumptions, and accordingly improve the models’
predictive power.
JEL: B40 C70
Keywords: Beliefs, Game Theory, Social Incentives, Evolution, Coordination.
Date: 2019
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2019-41&r=hpe
6. Citation Patterns in Economics and Beyond
Matthias Aistleitner (Johannes Kepler University); Jakob Kapeller
(Johannes Kepler University); Stefan Steinerberger (Yale University,
Department of Mathematics)
In this paper we comparatively explore three claims concerning the
disciplinary character of economics by means of citation analysis. The three
claims under study are: (1) economics exhibits strong forms of institutional
stratification and, as a byproduct, a rather pronounced internal hierarchy,
(2) economists strongly conform to institutional incentives and (3) modern
mainstream economics is a largely self-referential intellectual project
mostly inaccessible to disciplinary or paradigmatic outsiders. The validity
of these claims is assessed by means of an interdisciplinary comparison of
citation patterns aiming to identify peculiar characteristics of economic
discourse. In doing so, we emphasize that citation data can always be
interpreted in different ways, thereby focusing on the contrast between a
`cognitive` and an `evaluative` approach towards citation data.
JEL: A10 A12 A14
Keywords: citation patterns, economics, interdisciplinary, scientometrics,
sociology of economics
Date: 2018–11
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:thk:wpaper:85&r=hpe
7. Journal of the History of Economic Thought Preprints – A
SECOND-GENERATION STRUCTURALIST TRANSFORMATION PROBLEM: THE RISE OF THE
INERTIAL INFLATION HYPOTHESIS
de Carvalho, Andre Roncaglia
The paper analyzes the rise of the Latin American-based inertial inflation
theory. Starting in the 1950s, various traditions in economics purported to
explain the concept of “inflation inertia”. Contributions ranging from Celso
Furtado and M.H. Simonsen to James Tobin anticipated key aspects of what
later became the inertial inflation hypothesis, building it into either
mathematical or conceptual frameworks compatible with the then
contemporaneous macroeconomic theory. In doing so, they bridged the
analytical gap with the North-American developments whilst maintaining the
key features of the CEPAL approach, such as distributional conflicts and
local institutional details. These contributions eventually influenced the
second moment of the monetarist-structuralist controversy that unraveled in
the 1980s. The paper also highlights how later works by structuralist
economists gradually stripped the inertial inflation approach of its
previous substance and form, thereby unearthing tensions among
Latin-American structuralists that led to the eventual decline of this
research program.
Date: 2019–01–28
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:gxy4n&r=hpe
8. Divided we stand? Professional consensus and political conflict in
academic economics
Beyer, Karl M.; Pühringer, Stephan
In this paper we address the issue of the role of ideology and political
preferences of publically engaged economists and contribute to the debate on
consensus in economics. To do so, we conduct a social network analysis on
the signatories of economist petitions, which we identify as one channel for
economists to exert public influence. We base our analysis on 77 public
policy petitions and presidential anti-/endorsement letters from 2008-2017
in the United States with more than 6,400 signatories and check the
robustness of our results with six sub-networks. Our contribution is
twofold: On the one hand we provide an extended empirical basis for the
debate on consensus in economics and the role of politics and ideology in
economics. On the other hand we provide a viable tool to trace the
ideological leaning of (prospective) economist petitions and economists
based on the social structure of petition networks.
JEL: A11 A13 A14 B20 B30 D04 E66 G18 I38 P16
Keywords: social network analysis,sociology of economics,consensus,public
economists,economist petitions,United States
Date: 2019
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cuswps:oek51&r=hpe
9. A century of economics and engineering at Stanford
Cherrier, Beatrice; Saïdi, Aurélien
This paper document the disciplinary exchanges between economists and
engineers at Stanford throughout the 20th century. We also elucidate how
this cross-fertlization was mediated by the institutional structure of the
university. We outline the role of key scholars such as Kenneth Arrow and
Robert Wilson, as well as engineers turned administrators like Frederick
Terman. We show that engineers largely drew upon successive economic
theories of decision and allocation with a view to improving practical
industrial management decisions. Reciprocally, economists found in
engineering the tools (from linear programming to optimal control theory)
they needed to rethink production and growth theory, an epistemology of
“application” that emphasized awareness to institutional details, trials and
errors and experiments to improve the design of processes and machines, and
all sorts of industrial settings to operationalize their theories of
decision, strategic interaction and bargaining. By the 2000s, they had
turned into economic engineers designing markets and other allocation
mechanisms. These cross-disciplinary exchanges were mediated by Stanford’s
own institutional culture, notably its use of joint appointments, the
development of multidisciplinary “programs” for students, the ability to
attract a variety of visitors every year, the entrepreneurial and
contract-oriented vision of its administrators, and the close ties with the
industrial milieu that came to be called the Silicon Valley.
Date: 2019–04–19
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:adtbj&r=hpe
10. Making Identity Count: UK 1960
Vucetic, Srdjan
The dominant discourse of British national identity in that year, which I
label “Modern Britain”, acknowledged modernity’s material basis, the
importance of wealth creation through technological innovation, industrial
production and exports, the power of patriarchy, and the need for order,
freedom, justice and fairness. Beyond this discourse, there was also a
mass-based discourse—I label it “Socialism” to signal continuity with my
topography of Britishness in 1950—that criticized Britain for its inherent
elitism and excessive respect for inherited wealth. Part of Ted Hopf,
Bentley Allan, and Srdjan Vucetic, Eds. Making Identity Count Project.
Coding examples: https://srdjanvucetic.files.wordpress.c
om/2019/03/mic-uk-1960-coding.xlsx
Date: 2019–05–15
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:n5ur2&r=hpe
11. Economic experiments and inference
Hirschauer, Norbert; Gruener, Sven; Mußhoff, Oliver; Becker, Claudia
Replication crisis and debates about p-values have raised doubts about what
we can statistically infer from research findings, both in experimental and
observational studies. The goal of this paper is to provide an adequate
differentiation of experimental studies that enables researchers to better
understand which inferences can and – perhaps more important – cannot be
made from particular designs.
Date: 2019–01–30
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:67mws&r=hpe
12. Economics from the Top Down: Does Hierarchy Unify Economic Theory?
Fix, Blair (York University)
What is the unit of analysis in economics? The prevailing orthodoxy in
mainstream economic theory is that the individual is the ‘ultimate’ unit of
analysis. The implicit goal of mainstream economics is to root macro-level
social structure in the micro-level actions of individuals. But there is a
simple problem with this approach: our knowledge of human behavior is
hopelessly inadequate for the task at hand. Faced with real-world
complexities, economists are forced to make bold (and seldom tested)
assumptions about human behavior in order to make models tractable. The
result is theory that has little to do with the real world. This
dissertation investigates an alternative approach to economics that I call
‘economics from the top down’. This approach begins with the following
question: what happens when we take the analytical focus off of individuals
and put it into social hierarchy? The effect of this analytical shift is
that we are forced to deal with the realities of concentrated power. The
focus on hierarchy leads to some surprising discoveries. First, I find
evidence that hierarchical organization has a biophysical basis. I show that
institution size (firms and governments) is strongly correlated with rates
of energy consumption, and that the growth of institutions can be
interpreted as the growth of social hierarchy. Second, I find that hierarchy
plays an important role in shaping income and income distribution. I find
that income scales strongly with hierarchical power (defined as the number
of subordinates under one’s control), and that hierarchical power affects
income more strongly than any other factor measured. Lastly, using an
empirically informed model of the hierarchical structure of US firms, I find
that hierarchy plays a dominant role in shaping the income distribution
tail. These results hint that hierarchy can be used to unify the study of
economic growth (understood in biophysical terms) and income distribution. I
conclude by making the first prediction of how the concentration of
hierarchical power should relate to the growth of energy consumption. This
prediction sheds new light on the origin of inequality. While this ‘top
down’ approach to economics is in its infancy, the results are encouraging.
Focusing on hierarchy gives fresh insight into many of the important
questions facing society — insight that cannot be obtained by focusing on
individuals.
Date: 2018–09–16
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:thesis:7uqw9&r=hpe
13. Léon Walras and Alfred Marshall: Microeconomic Rational Choice or
Human and Social Nature?
Richard Arena (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS); Katia Caldari
(University of Padova, Italy)
Date: 2019–11
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2019-33&r=hpe
15. Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five
James J. Heckman (University of Chicago); Sidharth Moktan (University of
Chicago)
This paper examines the relationship between placement of publications in
Top Five (T5) journals and receipt of tenure in academic economics
departments. Analyzing the job histories of tenure-track economists hired by
the top 35 U.S. economics departments, we find that T5 publications have a
powerful influence on tenure decisions and rates of transition to tenure. A
survey of the perceptions of young economists supports the formal
statistical analysis. Pursuit of T5 publications has become the obsession of
the next generation of economists. However, the T5 screen is far from
reliable. A substantial share of influential publications appears in non-T5
outlets. Reliance on the T5 to screen talent incentivizes careerism over
creativity.
JEL: A14 I23 J44 O31
Keywords: tenure and promotion practices, career concerns, economics
publishing, citations
Date: 2018–09
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:thk:wpaper:82&r=hpe
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