Philosophy of Economics

Abstract: Current U.S. trade policy is rooted in zero-sum metrics and symmetrical retaliation models that fail to capture the systemic nature of global economic flows. This paper proposes a new framework based on CODES (Chirality of Dynamic Emergent Systems) to design trade policy through structured resonance rather than probabilistic deficit logic. By modeling trade as a dynamic phase relationship between systems, we present a path toward optimized leverage, structural resilience, and long-term coherence across economic networks. -/- CODES reframes trade not (...) as a balance sheet but as a signal system—where coherence, not parity, defines strength. We introduce the Coherence Index (CI) as a new metric for evaluating the structural intelligence of trade relationships, compare traditional tactics like reciprocal tariffs with phase-aware alternatives, and propose a policy design language rooted in emergent alignment. The age of retaliation economics is ending. A new phase begins—with structure as signal, and resonance as strategy. (shrink)

Abstract -/- This paper introduces CODES-Quant, the first trading architecture grounded in structured resonance rather than probabilistic modeling. Built on the Resonance Intelligence Core (RIC), the system uses prime-anchored harmonic functions (Cₙ), a real-time coherence metric (PAS), and a nonlinear memory engine (ELF) to detect alignment in market structure and guide execution based on phase integrity—not prediction. -/- Unlike traditional quant frameworks that optimize for expected value or volatility surfaces, CODES-Quant detects coherence events—moments when market behavior reflects deep structural resonance. (...) The system includes CHORDLOCK, a multi-scale positioning module that locks trades only when macro-phase alignment is confirmed, and FlameCam, a visual overlay for human interpretability. -/- We demonstrate how this architecture outperforms probabilistic models across key market regimes—FOMC events, earnings traps, and macro rotations—by tuning to the field underneath price, not the noise surrounding it. With no training, no optimization, and no probabilistic assumptions, CODES-Quant redefines trading as resonance participation, not stochastic speculation. (shrink)

Scenarios and pathways, as defined in the SSP-RCP framework, are central to recent climate research and the latest IPCC report. Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) offer a small set of alternative futures through qualitative narratives and quantitative projections. A key use of SSP-based scenarios is mitigation analysis, presenting decision-makers with a seemingly neutral set of policy options. However, all SSPs assume continuous global economic growth (GEGA) through 2100, effectively narrowing the solution space and embedding value-laden assumptions that challenge the IPCC’s claim (...) to policy neutrality. Post-growth scholars contest GEGA, but post-growth mitigation scenarios have yet to be fully integrated into this scenario framework. From a philosophy of value-laden science perspective, I argue that this integration is necessary. I propose two approaches to do so, demonstrating how inclusion of post-growth scenarios aligns with a diversity criterion — ultimately enhancing the framework’s objectivity and strengthening the IPCC’s policy neutrality. (shrink)

I argue that alienation objections to housing markets face a dilemma. Either they purport to explain distributive injustices, or they hold that markets are objectionable on intrinsic grounds. The first disjunct is empirically dubious. The second undermines the motivation for objecting to housing markets, and overgeneralizes: if markets are objectionable due to alienation, so is all large-scale social cooperation.

Political Equality is the view that, in political matters, everyone should have an equal say. Political Sufficiency is the view that, in political matters, everyone should have enough of a say. Whereas Political Equality is concerned with relativities, Political Sufficiency is a matter of absolutes. It is natural to assume that, to justify ‘one person, one vote,’ we must appeal to Political Equality. We argue that this is not the case. If Political Equality justifies ‘one person, one vote,’ so does (...) Political Sufficiency. Moreover, there is reason to prefer Political Sufficiency to Political Equality. (shrink)

We explore the connection between four major inferential paradigms in statistical science and inferential practice in current econometrics. We develop the argument that econometrics is still largely characterized by John Stuart Mill’s conception of statistical inference from data, who saw a distinction between ‘theorists’ and ‘practical men’. We follow up with a review of all empirical papers published in the Top 5 economics journals in the period 2000–2018 (N = 2,258). In spite of Rodrik’s [(2015). Economics rules: The rights and (...) wrongs of the dismal science. W. W. Norton & Company] much-debated notion of economics that sees issues of model selection at the core of the discipline, the ‘theory first’ / ‘pre-eminence of theory’ approach vastly dominates in the sample (94.0%). When model selection and model uncertainty is accounted for, this largely happens under the frequentist statistical paradigm. This finding may be explained by frequentism’s special role as an ‘orientational paradigm’ (Hoyningen-Huene and Kincaid, [2023]. What makes economics special: Orientational paradigms. Journal of Economic Methodology, 30(2), 188–202) in economics. (shrink)

Economic methodologists join economists in crediting market designers for taking a pragmatic approach toward improving markets for the common good. Accordingly, the new wave of market design, designated ‘tech economics,’ now accepts responsibility for pursuing efficiency, as well as a myriad of other policy goals. Yet, ambiguity surrounds the targets they hold out for intervention and therefore the justifications they have offered for the continued deployment of their designs. By scrutinizing the theoretical and practical features of these designers’ ‘markets,’ this (...) paper finds that market designers have offered to assist platforms in extending their domains of governance. While this stance has opened up multitudes of design opportunities, the attendant conceptual shift raises questions not only about the activities undertaken by specific tech economists, but more generally about the plausibility of the economist’s professed stance to improve markets for the benefit of all. (shrink)

Fausto Corvino has recently argued in this journal that, given present people’s reasonable expectation of future people’s economic activity, present and future people stand in the relation required by both of the two main camps of justice as reciprocity: justice as self-interested reciprocity and justice as fair reciprocity. In reply, I argue that on neither view is the relation Corvino identifies the relation the view requires and that neither view endorses his principle of intergenerational distributive justice, Transgenerational Sufficiency, in a (...) contract between generations. I show that these concerns generalize to any view of synchronic direct intergenerational reciprocity. (shrink)

This article links the human concern for relative social standing with technological developments, and the future of work. We argue that to the extent that the desire for social status retains its importance in human behaviour, technological advancements affecting the production of goods and services will not necessarily lead to a diminishment of the demand for human labour. This essay makes two principal contributions. First, it links two different literatures: that regarding status-driven consumption, and that regarding the effects of technological (...) change on labour markets. Second, it offers an alternative justification for the conclusion that radical technological shocks will not eliminate the importance of work. (shrink)

In this article, we describe what cryptocurrency is, how it works, and how it relates to familiar conceptions of and questions about money. We then show how normative questions about monetary policy find new expression in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. These questions can play a role in addressing not just what money is, but what it should be. A guiding theme in our discussion is that progress here requires a mixed approach that integrates philosophical tools with the purely technical results (...) of disciplines like computer science and economics. (shrink)

Though Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner’s _On Trade Justice_ admirably incorporates the history of European philosophy and U.S. government, their otherwise reasonable proposals rest on dubious grounds. The book derives both much of its appeal, and its primary vulnerability, from a cluster of central terms that are situated precariously at the intersection of metaphors and concepts, or what Lakoff and Johnson call “metaphorical concepts.” In this article, I explore the three most important such terms, as featured in the following paraphrase (...) of theirs: “_Trade_ is an _embedded ground_ of justice.” For each italicized term, I conclude, Risse and Wollner vacil-late between its most conceptual and metaphorical meanings, thereby attempting to (a) stretch “trade” to identify prehistoric exchange with global capitalism, so as to (b) rebrand the contextual “ground” of this universal activity as a foundation, even though (c) foundations “embedded” in other foundations simply reduce to their lowest common denominator. The latter, in this case, is global capitalism, the most immoral practices of which they are thereby pressured to defend, including temporary forms of the very exploitation that they so persuasively reconceive and otherwise condemn. (shrink)

Michael Otsuka argues that collective pension schemes are forms of social cooperation on equal terms for mutual advantage and thus, matters of social justice. In this way Otsuka wants to understand collectively funded pensions in Rawlsian terms. I argue that not all forms of social cooperation are the same and that the specific kind of social cooperation Rawls has in mind is, in at least three central respects, different from the kind of social cooperation involved in the collective pension schemes (...) Otsuka describes. (shrink)

This contribution discusses the central thesis in Michael Otsuka’s book that collective pensions can be organized on a voluntary basis from the recent experience with pension reform in the Netherlands. Despite a long tradition of collective-funded pensions organized in a decentralized way by social partners, basis reform was necessary as population ageing made it increasingly harder to maintain the intergenerational solidarity implicit in these pensions. Although it is well-established that risk sharing between generations can be beneficial and welfare improving to (...) all, it is far from certain that new generations will enter existing pension arrangements on a voluntary basis. First, there is a considerable ‘discontinuity risk’ if deficits in pension funding – caused by bad shocks – deter younger generations from entering the scheme. Second, even if it is to their own interest most people do not voluntarily engage in pension schemes due to several kinds of behavioural and psychological barriers. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to a symposium on Michael Otsuka’s book, How to Pool Risk Across Generations. Following Otsuka, one may distinguish three distinct systems of cooperation within a standard pension arrangement: the retirement system, the longevity risk pool and the investment risk pool. It is important to observe, however, that only the retirement system constitutes a genuine system of intergenerational cooperation, the other two are essentially intragenerational, in that they pool risks among members of a cohort. Otsuka is (...) faulted for being occasionally less than clear on these distinctions. (shrink)

I agree that a good pensions system should embody some form of collective risk pooling and that this would be to the advantage of everyone. There are some difficult issues of adverse selection to be solved, however. Moreover, egalitarian concerns are of crucial importance in most countries and they require to go further than collective risk pooling and to take into account that society is more than a system of self-interested monetary transfers between and within cohorts.

A response to pressures on pension finance caused by population ageing and economic turbulence has been a substantial move from traditional defined-benefit plans in which, at least in principle, all risk falls on the contributions side, to defined-contribution plans in which risk during accumulation all falls on the benefits side. This paper argues that both designs are ‘corner solutions’ and hence generally suboptimal, and goes on to set out a range of designs that offer different ways of sharing risk among (...) workers, employers, future pensioners and current pensioners. (shrink)

What follows is a sketch of three of the main claims of How to Pool Risks across Generations: The Case for Collective Pensions (Otsuka 2023) with which my symposium commentators critically engage: namely, that (1) by efficiently pooling risks across as well as within generations, (2) collective pensions can realize a form of Rawlsian reciprocity involving fair terms of cooperation for mutual advantage, (3) through the voluntary binding agreements of individuals to join a mutual association that provides social insurance. I (...) respond to their challenges to these claims in my replies that follow their contributions. (shrink)

Insurers draw on sophisticated models for the probability distributions over losses associated with catastrophic events that are required to price insurance policies. But prevailing pricing methods don’t factor in the ambiguity around model-based projections that derive from the relative paucity of data about extreme events. I argue however that most current theories of decision making under ambiguity only partially support a solution to the challenge that insurance decision makers face and propose an alternative approach that allows for decision making that (...) is responsive to both the evidential situation of the insurance decision maker and their attitude to ambiguity. (shrink)

A narrowly person-affecting (NPA) axiology is an account of the moral ranking of outcomes such that the comparison of any two outcomes depends on the magnitude and weight of individuals’ well-being gains and losses between the two. This article systematically explores NPA axiology. It argues that NPA axiology yields an outcome ranking that satisfies three fundamental axioms: Pareto, Anonymity and, plausibly, Pigou-Dalton. The axiology is neutral to non-well-being considerations (desert); and (assuming well-being measurability) leads to the Repugnant Conclusion (RC). In (...) short, NPA axiology provides a grounding for Paretian, equity-regarding welfarism, albeit one that includes the RC. (shrink)

According to relational egalitarianism, justice requires equal relations. In this paper, I ask the question: can equal relations be unjust according to relational egalitarianism? I argue that while on some conceptions of relational egalitarianism, equal relations cannot be unjust, there are conceptions in which equal relations can be unjust. Surprisingly, whether equal relations can be unjust cuts across the distinction between responsibility-sensitive and non-responsibility-sensitive conceptions of relational egalitarianism. I then show what follows if one accepts a conception in which equal (...) relations can be unjust, including why it provides a reason to grant some people less political power than others. (shrink)

When reading contemporary theories of distributive justice, one could easily get the impression that questions of fiscal design are normatively speaking merely instrumental for realizing the distributive ideal. Once the overall conception of justice is settled upon, questions of how the state should arrange its institutions and policies are settled if they effectively and efficiently promote the preferred distribution. I argue that such pure instrumentalism is mistaken in the context of fiscal policy. As a result, there is nothing problematic or (...) morally arbitrary about accepting domain-specific principles of fiscal justice. (shrink)

This paper is about time preferences, the phenomenon that the very same things are usually considered the less valuable the farther in the future they are obtained. The utilities of those things are discounted at a certain rate. The paper presents a novel normative argument for exponential discount rates, whatever their empirical adequacy. It proposes to take indexical utility seriously, i.e. utilities referring to indexical propositions (that speak of ‘I’, ‘now’, etc.) as opposed to non-indexical propositions. Economic focus is only (...) on the latter, while the former are neglected. The potential ignorance of when is now generates a difference between indexical and non-indexical utility that can be exploited for a novel argument in favour of exponential discount rates. (shrink)

This paper introduces a theory of ownership that is rooted in Israel Kirzner’s theory of entrepreneurship – The Entrepreneurial Theory of Ownership. Its central idea is that natural resources are not available to us automatically as other approaches to justice implicitly assume. Before we can use a resource, we need to do preparatory work in the form of making an entrepreneurial judgement on it. This fact, as I argue, makes it possible to put private ownership as a natural right on (...) a firm normative ground and answer many traditional challenges to private property. (shrink)

Friedrich von Hayek’s classical liberalism argued that free markets allow individuals the greatest opportunity to achieve their ends. This paper develops an internal critique of this claim. It argues that once externalities are introduced, the forms of economic knowledge Hayek thought to undermine government action and orthodox utilitarianism also rule out relative welfarist assessments of more or less regulated markets. Given the pervasiveness of externalities in modern economies, Hayek will frequently be unable to make comparative welfarist claims, or he must (...) relax his epistemic assumptions and allow for greater government action than his classical liberalism would wish to accept. (shrink)

In Explaining Technology, Koppl et al. (2023) argue that “recombination is the essential driver of technological evolution” (p. 3). Modelling combinatorial innovation as a self-propelling, “autocatalytic” process raises the question of what explanatory role, if any, is left for institutional analysis. Although the authors grant institutions only an auxiliary explanatory role, they hint at the functional importance of market institutions, trade networks, patent law, and entrepreneurship. Our paper argues that institutions matter because they crucially affect aggregate levels and rates of (...) recombination and innovation, as well as shaping patterns of recombination and innovation that occur. This paper builds upon Koppl et al.’s acknowledgement of these institutional effects by integrating combinatorial evolution within recent developments in commons theory and institutional economics. Specifically, we argue the burgeoning literature on Governing Knowledge Commons offers a fruitful framework and body of empirical case studies that illuminates the diverse institutions individuals use to facilitate and steer combinatorial innovation. Whilst healthy institutional diversity may incentivize more recombination than any single monocentric institutional arrangement, the non-teleological aspect of recombination means that innovative processes can exude either productive, unproductive, or destructive effects. The institutional diversity fostered by flourishing knowledge commons may allow people to put combinatorial innovations into more productive uses while internalizing their complex externalities. At the same time, it may generate socio-cultural resistances to some forms of innovation processes. We illustrate our theory using cases related to several applied topics including intellectual property, competition policy, and the development of unmanned aerial vehicles. (shrink)

The ‘explanation paradox’ due to Reiss can be resolved by recognizing that economic models that begin with assumptions of rational choice compel explanatory assent because they exploit a pattern of reasoning humans are hardwired to accept as explanatory: what cognitive scientists call the theory of mind. I review recent research in evolutionary anthropology, neuroscience and developmental psychology that substantiates the conclusion that explanations exploiting expectations and preferences (i.e. beliefs and desires) were hard wired into Hominins as the solution to a (...) design problem in early human evolution, and continue to drive our explanatory and predictive expectations even well beyond their domain of effective employment. Economic models employ this explanatory strategy outside the domain of the effective employment of rational choice models. This is the source of our conviction that they explain in spite of their failure to satisfy any reasonable criteria for scientific explanation. (shrink)

This chapter argues that central banks find themselves between a rock and a hard place when it comes to green central banking. Either they endorse the project, exposing them to the charge that they lack the input legitimacy to do so, or they eschew taking into account climate concerns, thus undermining their output legitimacy. Our discourse analysis of central bankers’ speeches shows that disagreements among officials from the same institution regarding green central banking are grounded on issues outside their core (...) expertise. Furthermore, neither the conservative nor the progressive central bankers defend positions that have the potential to overcome the legitimacy dilemma we formulate. (shrink)

La concurrence fiscale internationale est une composante essentielle du paysage fiscal contemporain. Cet essai analyse les responsabilités de l’État dans ce contexte d’interdépendance des systèmes fiscaux. Il soutient que l’État a le devoir 1) de mettre en œuvre le projet collectif défini par sa population, 2) de respecter l’autonomie des autres États et 3) d’assister les pays démunis. Cette conceptualisation des responsabilités étatiques a des conséquences théoriques et pratiques. Du côté théorique, la conjonction des deux premières responsabilités pousse à abandonner (...) la notion traditionnelle de souveraineté́ comme non-ingérence. Aujourd’hui, une notion adéquate de la souveraineté́ doit être sensible aux externalités internationales produites par l’action d’un État. De plus, la conception de la souveraineté́ esquissée ici est compatible avec un impératif d’assistance envers les pays en voie de développement. Du côté pratique, le respect de ces responsabilités étatiques requiert un nouveau régime de coopération fiscale entre les pays. (shrink)

Using data on submitted and published manuscripts in Feminist Economics from 1995 to 2019, we examine differences in method and scope used by authors residing in the Global North and Global South. We specifically focus on research methods, intersectional analyses, region of analysis, and co-authorship status. Further, using logistic regression models, we examine the relationship between authors’ location and use of research methods. We find authors in the Global South are more likely to engage in empirical and mixed-methods papers compared (...) to Global North authors in our sample. Moreover, a greater share of Global South authors engage in intersectional analysis and exhibit geographical focus on developing countries. Drawing insights from the Feminist Economics manuscripts data, we argue that encouraging Global South research can contribute to the goals of the field of feminist economics – aimed at inclusivity, diversity of standpoints, and plurality in research methods, thereby improving overall economic research. (shrink)

Der interkulturelle Dialog mit der japanischen Philosophie erhellt die verborgenen, unreflektierten Denkgewohnheiten der Wirtschaftswissenschaften. Die Andersartigkeit japanischen Denkens macht den impliziten methodologischen Grundrahmen der Ökonomie sichtbar, verweist kritisch auf Widersprüche sowie Erklärungslücken und zeigt Alternativen auf. Ansprechend und leicht verständlich geschrieben, bricht das Buch mit der tief in der Ökonomie verwurzelten Vorstellung der Welt als einer Gesamtheit unabhängiger, essentiell unveränderlicher Dinge bzw. Individuen und zeigt die Wirtschaft als ein interde.

In institutional design, public policy and for society as a whole, securing freedom of choice for individuals is important. But how much choice should we aim for? Various theorists argue that above some level more choice improves neither wellbeing nor autonomy. Worse still, psychology research seems to suggest that too much choice even makes us worse off. Such reasons suggest the Sufficiency View: increasing choice is only important up to some sufficiency level, a level that is not too far from (...) the level enjoyed by well-off citizens in rich liberal countries today. I argue that we should reject the Sufficiency View and accept Liberal Optimism instead: expanding freedom of choice should remain an important priority even far beyond levels enjoyed in rich liberal countries today. I argue that none of the arguments given for the Sufficiency View work. Neither psychological evidence nor any broader social trends support it. If anything, they support Liberal Optimism instead. I also show why further increases are possible and desirable, and sketch some implications for debates around immigration, economic growth, markets and the value of community. (shrink)

La crise socio-écologique du capitalisme produit de profonds effets sur la pensée contemporaine, qui semble prise d'un véritable vertige ontologique. Face aux catastrophes en cours, on voit se multiplier les travaux qui s'inquiètent de la réalité de la nature et de la manière dont s'y inscrivent les sociétés, tout se passant comme si la philosophie et les sciences sociales cherchaient à recomposer en pensée un monde que l'accumulation du capital tend à décomposer. Cet ouvrage constitue une intervention marxiste dans ces (...) controverses ontologiques. Il propose une interprétation nouvelle des Manuscrits de 1844, texte dans lequel, pour la première fois, Marx analyse la nature du capital : son essence ou sa définition et le type de rapport qu'on y entretient à la terre et à ses habitants. Frédéric Monferrand y montre que l'appropriation matérielle de la nature, parce qu'elle est constitutive de toute vie sociale, représente à la fois le lieu stratégique d'une transformation radicale du monde où nous vivons et l'enjeu historique d'une libération du monde dont nous vivons. (shrink)

Much work in game theory concerns mechanisms by which players can infer information about the utilities and beliefs of other players based on actions within games and pre-play signals. When game theory is applied to interactions among people, such analysis interprets them as ‘mindreading’. Recent work in cognitive science, however, suggests that human coordination rests more centrally on ‘mindshaping’, where interactants determine preferences jointly. As mindshaping is strategic, there is motivation to extend game theory to accommodate it. Conditional Game Theory (...) (CGT) is a strategic theory of mindshaping. We show how it can be used to help players of standard games identify correlated equilibrium, and thus solve games. We then extend CGT to address a challenge to the relevance of correlated equilibrium to empirical choice data, by showing how pre-play analysis using CGT can reconcile the Harsanyi Doctrine – assumed common priors among Bayesian players – with rank-dependent choice as observed in economic experiments. (shrink)

The interpretation of economic theories varies along several dimensions. First, models can describe reality, illustrate a recommended state of affairs, or analyze the structure and implications of a theory. Second, theories can be used for prediction or for explanation. Third, theories can relate to reality in a rule-based or case-based manner. Fourth, theories can be statements about economic reality or about the act of economic reasoning itself. Fifth, theories can offer predictions or merely critique reasoning. We argue that theories are (...) often open to multiple interpretations which can shift depending on the context in which the theory is applied, the surrounding economic literature, and the argument made by the interpreter. (shrink)

This essay aims to provide a rigorous foundation for Gilboa's, Postlewaite's, Samuelson's and Schmeidler's (GPSS's) account of the constitution of models and the role of models in explanation and prediction. Although I shall offer some criticisms, my goal is to sketch analyses of explanations and models that complement GPSS's distinctions between the uses of models to explain, prescribe, predict, and explore the consequences of theories.

Methodological appraisal usually aims at a discourse that contributes to the improvement of knowledge production processes in economics. Attempts by economists, such as that by Gilboa et al. (2022. Economic theories and their dueling interpretations. Journal of Economic Methodology, 1–20) to engage in such a discourse are laudable and needed because they draw on field-specific expertise and experience from economic practice and thereby can steer such discourse into promising directions. However, while Gilboa et al. seem to share the ambition of (...) doing economic methodology in the service of progress, their contribution is not sufficiently self-critical. Instead of seriously considering the diversity of contemporary modeling practices, their position commits them to an outdated view of economics and can be read as licensing the preservation of conceptual and theoretical elements of standard economics that the discipline has long been criticized for. As such, the authors miss out on fully reaching their own ambitions of a practice-based appraisal that pushes economists towards self-critical and forward-looking modeling. (shrink)

Economics is a societally influential discipline, but the relationship of its theoretical activity to social reality and practical policy is chronically puzzling. Its theoretical models appear to involve a lot of falsehood, and modellers seem unconcerned about this and about any possible future uses of the models, while sticking to the same unifying theoretical framework. Gilboa et al. (2014, 2022) aspire to resolve the puzzle in terms of varying interpretations of models. I offer critical comments on their ideas while expanding (...) and refining my own account of what I call model commentary whose task is to help understand and evaluate the process of modelling. I point out the rich complexity of adequate commentaries and discuss the issue of whose responsibility it is to construe and communicate them. (shrink)

This article critically evaluates Itzhak Gilboa, Andrew Postlewaite, Larry Samuelson, and David Schmeidler’s account of economic models. First, it gives a selective overview of their argument, highlighting their emphasis on similarity and oversight of the role of idealizations in economics. Second, it proposes a sketch of an account of models as arguments and argumentative devices. This account not only sheds light on Gilboa et al.’s approach, including its shortcomings, but also identifies key challenges in model-based inference, suggesting a fresh perspective (...) on the uses of models in economics for diverse objectives. (shrink)

We mobilise contemporary philosophy of science to further clarify observations on economic modelling made by Gilboa et al. (2023). We adopt a normative stance towards these modelling practices to identify the extent to which they are epistemically justified. Our message is simple: many of the distinctions proposed by Gilboa et al. (2023) are useful, but without the proper qualifications, too much flexibility in choosing the right interpretation risks downplaying the crucial role that empirical evidence should play in any modelling endeavour.

This comment on 'Economic theories and their Dueling interpretations' questions the descriptive adequacy of the ‘sociology of economics' proposed by Gilboa, Postlewaite, Samuelson, and Schmeidler (GPSS) (2022). We ask whether economists still perceive the role of microeconomic theory as central as do GPSS. In particular, is present-day economics unified by the principles of maximising, subject to constraints and equilibrium analysis? We argue that this is not the case. GPSS’ appeal to the interpretative flexibility of economic theories appears apologetic, especially the (...) suggestion that theories and models, which once were considered positive descriptions or predictive instruments, are now cast as analytical or methodological exercises. We conclude on a more constructive note, drawing from the recent philosophical discussion of modelling which, quite paradoxically, grants highly idealized and simplified models a more important role than GPSS appear to allow. (shrink)