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L'objet de cet article est de présenter et discuter les objections d'inspiration anti-réaliste qui sont adressées au programme de modélisation de la rationalité limitée dans les sciences de la décision, et en particulier dans les sciences économiques. Après avoir reconstruit ces objections dans leurs diverses variantes, nous proposons un argument qui entend contrer de manière constructive la variante que nous appelons comportementale, selon laquelle les modèles de décision ne doivent être évalués qu'en fonction de leur capacité à décrire les comportements (...) |
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In this paper I study how the theoretical categories of consumption theory were used by Milton Friedman in order to classify empirical data and obtain predictions. Friedman advocated a case by case definition of these categories that traded theoretical coherence for empirical content. I contend that this methodological strategy puts a clear incentive to contest any prediction contrary to our interest: it can always be argued that these predictions rest on a wrong classification of data. My conjecture is that this (...) |
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This reassessment of the long debate about Friedman's thesis on the pointlessness of testing assumptions in economics shows that Friedman's three famous examples, on which a large part of the credit given to this thesis is based, far from substantiating it, can be used to establish radically opposite conclusions. Furthermore, it is shown that this so-called “instrumentalist” thesis, when applied by Friedman to economics, is of a quite different nature and raises much more serious problems than the standard instrumentalist thesis (...) |
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This essay attempts to distinguish the pressing issues for economists and economic methodologists concerning realism in economics from those issues that are of comparatively slight importance. In particular I shall argue that issues concerning the goals of science are of considerable interest in economics, unlike issues concerning the evidence for claims about unobservables, which have comparatively little relevance. In making this argument, this essay raises doubts about the two programs in contemporary economic methodology that raise the banner of realism. In (...) |