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The Efficiency Question in Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Robert Northcott
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Abstract

Much philosophical attention has been devoted to whether economic models explain and more generally to how scientific models represent. Yet there is an issue more practically important to economics than either of these, which I label the efficiency question: regardless of how exactly models represent, or of whether their role is explanatory or something else, is current modeling practice an efficient way to achieve these goals or should research efforts be redirected? In addition to showing how the efficiency question has been relatively neglected, I give two examples of the kind of analysis it requires.

Type
Economics
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 5 , December 2018 , pp. 1140 - 1151
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I thank Anna Alexandrova and two anonymous referees for useful feedback. I also thank Richard Urwin, my fellow PSA symposiasts Lawrence Boland, Jennifer Jhun, and James Weatherall, as well as the symposium audience.

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