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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Ashenfelter, Orley (Princeton University) |
| Abstract: | In this essay I review Sylvia Nasar's long awaited new history of economics, Grand Pursuit. I describe how the book is an economic history of the period from 1850-1950, with distinguished economists' stories inserted in appropriate places. Nasar's goal is to show how economists work, but also to show that they are people too – with more than enough warts and foibles to show they are human! I contrast the general view of the role of economics in Grand Pursuit with Robert Heilbroner's remarkably different conception in The Worldly Philosophers. I also discuss more generally the question of why economists might be interested in their history at all. |
| Keywords: | economic history, economic growth, economic policy |
| JEL: | B10 B30 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6213&r=hpe |
| By: | Itzhak Gilboa (HEC, Paris, and Tel-Aviv University); Andrew Postlewaite (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania); Larry Samuelson (Department of Economics, Yale University); David Schmeidler (The InterDisciplinary Center in Herzliya, and TAU) |
| Abstract: | People often wonder why economists analyze models whose assumptions are known to be false, while economists feel that they learn a great deal from such exercises. We suggest that part of the knowledge generated by academic economists is case-based rather than rule-based. That is, instead of offering general rules or theories that should be contrasted with data, economists often analyze models that are “theoretical cases”, which help understand economic problems by drawing analogies between the model and the problem. According to this view, economic models, empirical data, experimental results and other sources of knowledge are all on equal footing, that is, they all provide cases to which a given problem can be compared. We offer some complexity arguments that explain why case-based reasoning may sometimes be the method of choice; why economists prefer simple examples; and why a paradigm may be useful even if it does not produce theories. |
| Keywords: | Methodology, Case-based reasoning |
| JEL: | B40 B41 |
| Date: | 2011–12–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:12-001&r=hpe |
| By: | Doepke, Matthias (Northwestern University); Tertilt, Michèle (University of Mannheim); Voena, Alessandra (Harvard Kennedy School) |
| Abstract: | Women's rights and economic development are highly correlated. Today, the discrepancy between the legal rights of women and men is much larger in developing compared to developed countries. Historically, even in countries that are now rich women had few rights before economic development took off. Is development the cause of expanding women's rights, or conversely, do women's rights facilitate development? We argue that there is truth to both hypotheses. The literature on the economic consequences of women's rights documents that more rights for women lead to more spending on health and children, which should benefit development. The political-economy literature on the evolution of women's rights finds that technological change increased the costs of patriarchy for men, and thus contributed to expanding women's rights. Combining these perspectives, we discuss the theory of Doepke and Tertilt (2009), where an increase in the return to human capital induces men to vote for women's rights, which in turn promotes growth in human capital and income per capita. |
| Keywords: | women's rights, political economy, development |
| JEL: | J10 N30 O10 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6215&r=hpe |
| By: | Dietrich, Franz |
| Abstract: | This paper studies a class of judgment aggregation rules, to be called `scoring rules' after their famous counterpart in preference aggregation theory. A scoring rule delivers the collective judgments which reach the highest total `score' across the individuals, subject to the judgments having to be rational. Depending on how we define `scores', we obtain several (old and new) solutions to the judgment aggregation problem,such as distance-based aggregation, premise- and conclusion-based aggregation, truth-tracking rules, and a Borda-type rule. Scoring rules are shown to generalize the classical scoring rules of preference aggregation theory. |
| Keywords: | judgment aggregation; social choice; scoring rules; Hamming rule; Borda rule; premise- and conclusion-based rules |
| JEL: | D70 D71 |
| Date: | 2011–12–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35657&r=hpe |
| By: | Esther Duflo |
| Abstract: | Women empowerment and economic development are closely related: in one direction, development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women; in the other direction, empowering women may benefit development. Does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion? This paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment-development nexus, and argues that the inter-relationships are probably too weak to be self-sustaining, and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women. |
| JEL: | D1 O1 O12 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17702&r=hpe |
| By: | Cabrales, Antonio; Nagel, Rosemarie; Rodríguez Mora, José V. |
| Abstract: | We perform an experiment which provides a laboratory replica of some important features of the welfare state. In the experiment, all individuals in a group decide whether to make a costly effort, which produces a random (independent) outcome for each one of them. The group members then vote on whether to redistribute the resulting and commonly known total sum of earnings equally amongst themselves. This game has two equilibria, if played once. In one of them, all players make effort and there is little redistribution. In the other one, there is no effort and nothing |
| Keywords: | Redistribution; Political equilibrium; Voting; Multiple equilibria; Experiments; |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ner:carlos:info:hdl:10016/12890&r=hpe |
| By: | Riedl, Arno (Maastricht University); Rohde, Ingrid M.T. (Istanbul Bilgi University); Strobel, Martin (Maastricht University) |
| Abstract: | Existing experimental research on behavior in weakest-link games shows overwhelmingly the inability of people to coordinate on the efficient equilibrium, especially in larger groups. We hypothesize that people are able to coordinate on efficient outcomes, provided they have sufficient freedom to choose their interaction neighborhood. We conduct experiments with medium sized and large groups and show that neighborhood choice indeed leads to coordination on the fully efficient equilibrium, irrespective if group size. This leads to substantial welfare effects. Achieved welfare is between 40 and 60 percent higher in games with neighborhood choice than without neighborhood choice. We identify exclusion as the simple but very effective mechanism underlying this result. In early rounds, high performers exclude low performers who in consequence 'learn' to become high performers. |
| Keywords: | efficient coordination, weakest-link, minimum effort, neighborhood choice, experiment |
| JEL: | C72 C92 D02 D03 D85 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6223&r=hpe |