Economists study "The Economy," or so one might suppose. Yet this overarching entity is strikingly absent from mainstream theory. Since the 1950s, it has generally been described with a few mathematical propositions and not given a description that attends to institutions, power relations, or the emergent properties that form the leading indicators in macroeconomic theory. There is thus a significant divergence between folk economics and scientific economics on this theoretical entity. This article briefly addresses the history of this concept, noting (...) its heyday in the interwar years, and brings to bear some of the analytical apparatus on institutional facts devised by John Searle. Whatever is meant by "The Economy" in folk economics appears to be significantly divergent from what is posited in scientific economics. Key Words: economy • Searle • theoretical entities • macroeconomics • economic indicators • folk economics. (shrink)

Contemporary economists deem virtually every piece of reasoning and argumentation in economics a model, forgetting that there may well be other conceptual tools at hand. This article demonstrates that David Hume used thought experiments to make some remarkable breakthroughs in monetary economics, and that this resolves a longstanding debate about an apparent inconsistency in Hume, between the neutrality and non-neutrality of money. In the actual world, money is never neutral for Hume; only in thought experiments does a sudden growth in (...) the money stock result in an identical and hence neutral increase in the price level. Thought experiments isolate tendencies but do not lend themselves to direct confirmation. Moreover, Hume’s dislike for the French model builders, Melon and Quesnay, captures an important juncture in mid eighteenth-century economic discourse regarding the warranted level of abstraction and of idealization. (shrink)

Economists are still very much in the grip of both operationalism and a reverence for classical mechanics as the science to emulate. Those who have exposed the weaknesses of this approach tend also to dismiss neo-classical economics as devoid of empirical and/or ideological-free content, a move which seems to have been counter-productive. This paper attempts to follow up on the more modest assessment of economics put forth by Allan Gibbard and Hal Varian. Their perspective on economic models suggests that economists (...) might better establish the scientific status of their discipline by adopting the Hempelian case for history. (shrink)

David Hume wrote prolifically and influentially on economics and was an enthusiast for the modern commercial era of manufacturing and global trade. As a vocal critic of the Church, and possibly a nonbeliever, Hume positioned commerce at the vanguard of secularism. I here argue that Hume broached ideas that gesture toward those offered by Max Weber in his famous Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Hume discerned a strong correlation between economic flourishing and Protestantism, and he pointed to a (...) “spirit of the age” that was built on modern commerce and fueled by religious tolerance. The Roman Catholic Church, by contrast, came under considerable attack by Hume, for fostering intolerance and draining and diverting funds. Hume recognized several of the dispositions that later appealed to Weber: an increased work ethic and tendency to frugality, enterprise, and investment in Protestant regions. A neo-Weberian literature now points to additional factors, the spread of literacy and the fostering of a network of trust among strangers, both of which Hume noted. Insofar as modern commerce both feeds upon and fosters more liberties and representative government, Hume also linked these with the advent and spread of Protestantism. My aim is not to suggest that these arguments have merit—there is good reason to question each and every assertion under the historical microscope—but rather to highlight the broader religious and cultural context in which Hume’s economics was broached. (shrink)

Why did Mill draw such a firm line between nature and society, and what did he mean by the claim that only permanent or necessary truths could be gleaned in nature? Why are the laws of production able to transcend the social realm and thereby attain a higher epistemological standing? Was Mill the first to make this distinction, or does it conform with a long tradition within the history of economic thought?

MARGARET LYNN SCHABAS (Toronto, 1954) is professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and served as the head of the Philosophy Department from 2004-2009. She has held professoriate positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at York University, and has also taught as a visiting professor at Michigan State University, University of Colorado-Boulder, Harvard, CalTech, the Sorbonne, and the École Normale de Cachan. As the recipient of several fellowships, she has enjoyed visiting terms at Stanford, Duke, (...) MIT, Cambridge, the LSE, and the MPI-Berlin. In addition to her doctorate in the history and philosophy of science and technology (Toronto 1983), she holds a bachelor of science in music (oboe) and the philosophy of science (Indiana 1976), a master’s degree in the history and philosophy of science (Indiana 1977), and a master’s degree in economics (Michigan1985). -/- She has published four books and over forty articles or book chapters in science studies. Some of the journals in which her articles can be found are Isis, Monist, History of Political Economy, Public Affairs Quarterly, Daedaelus, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science. Her first book, A world ruled by number (1990) examines the emergence of mathematical economics in the second half of the nineteenth century. Her second book, The natural origins of economics (2005), traces the transformation of economics from a natural to a social science. She also has two co-edited collections, Oeconomies in the age of Newton (2003), with Neil De Marchi, and David Hume’s political economy (2008), with Carl Wennerlind. She is currently writing a monograph on Hume’s economics, as well as articles on the history and philosophy of bioeconomics. She is currently president of the History of Economics Society. -/- EJPE interviewed Margaret Schabas at the University of British Columbia in March 2013. In this interview, she recounts her earliest foray into the history and philosophy of economics, the conceptual trade between economics and natural science, and her most recent undertaking: the history and philosophy of bioeconomics. (shrink)