Methodological approach to past and recent economics.

Keywords

• Research strategies and methods of explanation in economics
• Current economics as the product of past economics
• Economic behavior in relation to social structure
• Models as instruments mediating between theory and data
• Economic policy, norms, and values
• Methodological approach with a theory-historical perspective

Programme Design

Our research programme investigates the mutual connections in economics between theorizing, modeling, and policy application, in order to explain research strategies and methods of explanation in economics.  In this investigation, the research group employs a methodological approach using a theory-historical perspective.  This involves examining changing research strategies and methods of explanation as employed in the history of economics up to the present.

We investigate current economics as the product of past economics, and study past economics to understand the development of current economics.  For both our study of current economics and past economics we focus on the research strategies and methods of explanation of economists.  We particularly focus on current economics because of the special methodological issues involved in its strategies and methods of explanation (see below), and because of its rapid evolution and change in recent decades.

A central characteristic of recent economics is a renewed interest in the relation between economic behavior and social structure, as reflected in a succession of new views and ideas about how economic behavior and social structure are mutually influencing.  These new currents in theory go hand in hand with new ideas about modeling, measurement, and investigative methods appropriate to economics.  In line with the research group's earlier research into models as instruments that mediate between theory and data, we investigate how these new techniques and methods are used to further represent, measure, and intervene in the economy.

Changes in economic theorizing and modeling have been accompanied by new thinking about the scope and content of economic policy.  This has expanded the range of norms and values at work in the applied and policy domains in economics, and also produced changes in thinking about the nature of political decision-making in regard to the economy and to economics as a science.  The linkages between economic theorizing, modeling, and measurement to economic policy are an explicit concern in the programme.

As a meta-study of economics, our investigations should serve economic researchers by pointing out the implications and consequences of various research strategies and methods of explanation in different sub-fields of economics as they relate to the discipline of economics as a whole.  In addition, we also aim to produce research that clarifies to the users of economic science in the public domain what current economics involves and how this applies to economic policy and political decision-making.