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Value-free Economics
Positive economics (as opposed to normative economics) is the part of economics that deals with positive statements. That is, it focuses on the description, quantification and explanation of economic phenomena.Stanley Wong (1987). "positive economics," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 3, pp. 920-21 It deals with empirical facts as well as cause-and-effect behavioral relationships and emphasizes that economic theory, economic theories must be consistent with existing observations and produce testable, precise predictions about the phenomena under question.Milton Friedman (1953). "Essays in Positive Economics#The Methodology of Positive Economics, The Methodology of Positive Economics," ''Essays in Positive Economics''. Positive economics as a science concerns analysis of economic behavior to determine what is true''.'' Examples of positive economic statements are "the unemployment rate in France is higher than that in the United States," or “an increase in governm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Normative Economics
Normative economics (as opposed to positive economics) is the part of economics that deals with normative statements. It focuses on the idea of fairness and what the outcome of the economy or goals of public policy ''ought to be''.Paul A. Samuelson and William D. Nordhaus (2004). ''Economics'', 18th ed., pp. 5-6 & ndGlossary of Terms, "Normative vs. positive economics." Economists commonly prefer to distinguish normative economics ("what ought to be" in economic matters) from positive economics ("what is"). Many normative (value) judgments, however, are held conditionally, to be given up if facts or knowledge of facts changes, so that a change of values may be purely scientific. On the other hand, welfare economist Amartya Sen distinguishes ''basic (normative) judgements'', which do not depend on such knowledge, from ''nonbasic'' judgments, which do. He said, "no judgments are demonstrably basic" while some value judgments may be shown to be nonbasic. This leaves open the possibil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Money Supply
In macroeconomics, the money supply (or money stock) refers to the total volume of currency held by the public at a particular point in time. There are several ways to define "money", but standard measures usually include Circulation (currency), currency in circulation (i.e. physical cash) and demand deposits (depositors' easily accessed assets on the books of financial institutions). The central bank of a country may use a definition of what constitutes legal tender for its purposes. Money supply data is recorded and published, usually by a government agency or the central bank of the country. Public sector, Public and private sector analysts monitor changes in the money supply because of the belief that such changes affect the price levels of Security (finance), securities, inflation, the exchange rates, and the business cycle. The relationship between money and prices has historically been associated with the quantity theory of money. There is some empirical evidence of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gunnar Myrdal
Karl Gunnar Myrdal ( ; ; 6 December 1898 – 17 May 1987) was a Swedish economist and sociologist. In 1974, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences along with Friedrich Hayek for "their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena." When his wife, Alva Myrdal, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982, they became the fourth ever married couple to have won Nobel Prizes, and the first to win independent of each other (versus a shared Nobel Prize by scientist spouses). He is best known in the United States for his study of race relations, which culminated in his book '' An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy''. The study was influential in the 1954 landmark U.S. Supreme Court Decision ''Brown v. Board of Education''. In Sweden, his work and political influence were important to the establishment of the Folkhemmet and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Positivism
Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. Gerber, ''Sociology'', Seventh Canadian Edition, Pearson Canada Other ways of knowing, such as theology, metaphysics, intuition, or introspection, are rejected or considered meaningless. Although the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of western thought, modern positivism was first articulated in the early 19th century by Auguste Comte.. His school of sociological positivism holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws. After Comte, positivist schools arose in logic, psychology, economics, historiography, and other fields of thought. Generally, positivists attempted to introduce scientific methods to their respective fields. Since the turn of the 20th century, positivism has de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dichotomy
A dichotomy is a partition of a whole (or a set) into two parts (subsets). In other words, this couple of parts must be * jointly exhaustive: everything must belong to one part or the other, and * mutually exclusive: nothing can belong simultaneously to both parts. If there is a concept A, and it is split into parts B and not-B, then the parts form a dichotomy: they are mutually exclusive, since no part of B is contained in not-B and vice versa, and they are jointly exhaustive, since they cover all of A, and together again give A. Such a partition is also frequently called a bipartition. The two parts thus formed are complements. In logic, the partitions are opposites if there exists a proposition such that it holds over one and not the other. Treating continuous variables or multi categorical variables as binary variables is called dichotomization. The discretization error inherent in dichotomization is temporarily ignored for modeling purposes. Etymology The term '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A System Of Logic
''A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive'' is an 1843 book by English philosopher John Stuart Mill. Overview In this work, he formulated the five principles of inductive reasoning that are known as Mill's Methods. This work is important in the philosophy of science, and more generally, insofar as it outlines the empirical principles Mill would use to justify his moral and political philosophies. An article in "Philosophy of Recent Times" has described this book as an "attempt to expound a psychological system of logic within empiricist principles.” This work was important to the history of science, being a strong influence on scientists such as Dirac. ''A System of Logic'' also had an impression on Gottlob Frege, who rebuked many of Mill's ideas about the philosophy of mathematics in his work ''The Foundations of Arithmetic''. Mill revised the original work several times over the course of thirty years in response to critiques and commentary by Whewell, Bain Bain may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century", he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control. Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. He contributed to the investigation of scientific methodology, though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell, John Herschel, and Auguste Comte, and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain. He engaged in written debate with Whewell. A member of the Liberal Party and author of the early feminist work ''The Subjection o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism. Beginning with '' A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an Empiricist. Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event caus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Falsifiability
Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses that was introduced by the philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book ''The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' (1934). He proposed it as the cornerstone of a solution to both the problem of induction and the problem of demarcation. A theory or hypothesis is falsifiable (or refutable) if it can be ''logically'' contradicted by an empirical test that can potentially be executed with existing technologies. Popper insisted that, as a logical criterion, it is distinct from the related concept "capacity to be proven wrong" discussed in Lakatos' falsificationism. Even being a logical criterion, its purpose is to make the theory predictive and testable, thus useful in practice. Popper opposed falsifiability to the intuitively similar concept of verifiability. Verifying the claim "All swans are white" would theoretically require observing all swans, which in actuality, is not possible. In contrast, obs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foundations Of Economic Analysis
''Foundations of Economic Analysis'' is a book by Paul A. Samuelson published in 1947 (Enlarged ed., 1983) by Harvard University Press. It is based on Samuelson's 1941 doctoral dissertation at Harvard University. The book sought to demonstrate a common mathematical structure underlying multiple branches of economics from two basic principles: maximizing behavior of agents (such as of utility by consumers and profits by firms) and stability of equilibrium as to economic systems (such as markets or economies). Among other contributions, it advanced the theory of index numbers and generalized welfare economics. It is especially known for definitively stating and formalizing qualitative and quantitative versions of the "comparative statics" method for calculating how a change in any parameter (say, a change in tax rates) affects an economic system. One of its key insights about comparative statics, called the correspondence principle, states that stability of equilibrium implies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Samuelson
Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he "has done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in economic theory". "In a career that spanned seven decades, he transformed his field, influenced millions of students and turned MIT into an economics powerhouse" Economic historian Randall E. Parker has called him the "Father of Modern Economics", and ''The New York Times'' considers him to be the "foremost academic economist of the 20th century". Samuelson was likely the most influential economist of the latter half of the 20th century."Paul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
