خلاصة:
In spite of some pessimistic attitudes towards methodology of economics, it has
succeeded as a central theme in numerous books, refereed journals, international
conferences and symposiums whose volume is increasing at an unprecedented rate.
The proliferation of methodological literature also is accompanied by a
proliferation of issues that concern: the goals of economics, realism of
economics, mathematics and economics, history and economics, ontology and
complexity. Economics usually is associated with the hypothetical deductive
method. But short-term and cycle analysis of macroeconomics and classical
analysis of long-term development do not depend on this method, instead they are
carried out within the methodological frameworks of historical-deductive,
empirical- inductive or dialectics. This paper focuses on the status and
diversity of methodology in economics.
ملخص الجهاز:
"Short-term and cycle analysis of macroeconomics and classical analysis of long-term development do not depend on this method, instead, they are carried out within the methodological frameworks of historical-deductive (Kalecki, 1971, Bresser-Pereira, 1996, 2003), empirical- inductive (Sims, 1995, Simkins, 1999) and dialectics (Ozawa, 2004).
In fact, of the five components of economic theories, namely: (a) the behavioral assumptions about the basic goals of the actor, (b) the auxiliary assumption specific to the problem at hand, (c) the rule that the actor employs to achieve his goal, (d) the constraints faced by the actor and finally (e) confronting predictions drawn from these elements with the data to see how well they explain them, the progress made in the last four components (technical mostly) has been substantially more than the progress made in the first, so that investigating the behavioral assumptions seem to have been an enterprise of last resort (Mueller,1992, as reprinted in Hausman,1995, P.
In fact, if one is trying to find out an optimal saving rate or the conditions under which a general equilibrium of a hypothetical economy exits in a unique and stable form, the steady state solution of a Solow’s growth model, a single price output combination of a firm at which the profit of that firm is maximized, or the exact multiple effect on output and employment of a given change in the money supply, one may not be able find a more efficient and economical way other than by way of mathematics (or geometry)."