Look at what economists are saying. ‘Changes in the real GDP unidirectionally and significantly Granger cause changes in inequality.’ Alternatively, ‘the evolution of growth and inequality must surely be the outcome of similar processes’ and ‘the policy maker … needs to balance the impact of policies on both growth and distribution’. Until a few years ago claims like this – real causal claims – were in disrepute in philosophy and economics alike and sometimes in the other social sciences as well. Nowadays causality is back, and with a vengeance. That growth causes inequality is just one from a sea of causal claims coming from economics and the other social sciences; and methodologists and philosophers are suddenly in intense dispute about what these kinds of claims can mean and how to test them. This collection is for philosophers, economists and social scientists or for anyone who wants to understand what causality is, how to find out about it and what it is good for.

If causal claims are to play a central role in social science and in policy – as they should – we need to answer three related questions about them:

1. What do they mean?

2. How do we confirm them?

3. What use can we make of them?

The starting point for the chapters in this collection is that these three questions must go together. For a long time we have tended to leave the first to the philosopher, the second to the methodologist and the last to the policy consultant.