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Societies for the History of Economics

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Fri Mar 31 17:18:55 2006
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==================== HES POSTING ====================== 
 
My name is Lawrence Boland and I teach economic methodology and theory at 
Simon Fraser University, located in Burnaby, B.C. Canada. 
 
Some members of this list will have seen one or more of my five books and 
fifty-four articles. A complete list of my publications is on my web page 
<http://www.sfu.ca/~boland>. On that page there are links to free copies 
of my first two books (1982 and 1986) and to pre-print drafts of three of 
my recent articles concerning how economists interpret Karl Popper (all in 
Adobe's pdf format). My 1965 PhD thesis was concerned with methodology 
decisions made by economic model builders and it was published as Chapters 
2 and 3 of my 1989 book.  
 
My research falls into two related categories: economic methodology and 
applied methodology. In the first category, my research agenda is to 
convince economists that the core of Popper's view of science is not 
"falsifiability" but systematic criticism. And furthermore, to get 
economists to recognize that Paul Samuelson is responsible for the 
promotion of falsificationism, not Popper. This agenda was the stimulus 
for the epilogue in my 1989 book. 
 
In the second category, my research agenda involves applying Popper's 
epistemology to economic theory. It focuses on the knowledge requirements 
of microeconomic decision making. Despite Hayek's recognition (60 years 
ago) of the need to be explicit about the decision maker's knowledge and 
despite Popper's convincing critiques of inductivist's epistemology, 
economists continue to presume a theory of knowledge that is at least 350 
years old and, moreover, one that was refuted by Hume 200 years ago. I 
began this research with my first two books.  
 
I am willing to communicate with any students or researchers who are 
interested in these two research agendas.  
 
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