The Nature of Economic Theory: A Philosophical Inquiry

不管我们喜欢与否，经济理论都影响着个人、企业、地方和州政府以及国家的行为方式。经济知识的提高将有助于改善人类福利，有助于控制和可靠地预测经济、政治和社会变化的经济后果。鉴于经济学的重要性日益增加，我们也越来越有必要更仔细地研究经济学的哲学基础，即诸如可测试性、进步、不切实际的假设、理想模型和理性的本质等问题。1976年，罗森博格博士发表了被称为这些问题的“分水岭”研究。在随后的10年里，罗森伯格博士一直沉浸在这些问题中，事实上，他领导了对该研究中最初捍卫的几个观点的批评。在这笔资助下，罗森博格博士将进一步研究经济哲学基础和经济理论本身发展方面不断膨胀的文献，以综合他自己的工作，并评估和吸收其他人对这一主题的重要贡献。由此产生的关于经济理论本质的研究将考察经济学哲学的替代方法，特别是修辞方法，考察经济学中进步的本质是什么，经济理论的功能，解释变量“期望”和“偏好”的意义和用途，作为应用数学的经济理论，新古典“持不同政见者”和他们的假设，以及经济学中的适应主义。这些研究有望成为最具挑衅性的，对经济学和科学哲学都有极大的兴趣。

Economic theory, whether we like it or not, affects the way individuals, businesses, local and state governments, and nations behave. Improvement in economic knowledge will help to ameliorate human welfare and help to control and reliably predict the economic consequences of economic, political and social changes. Given the increasing importance of economics, it becomes increasingly necessary as well that we should more closely examine the philosophical foundations of economics, that is, such issues as testability, progress, unrealistic assumptions, ideal models and the nature of rationality. In 1976, Dr. Rosenberg published what has been called a "watershed" study of these issues. In the ensuing 10 years, Dr. Rosenberg has immersed himself in these issues and has in fact led the criticism of several of the views originally defended in that study. Under this grant, Dr. Rosenberg will further study the ballooning literature in the philosophical foundations of economics and developments in economic theory itself in order to synthesize his own work and to assess and incorporate the important contributions of others to this subject. The resulting study on the nature of economic theory will examine alternate approaches to the philosophy of economics, especially the rhetorical approach, examine what the nature of progress is in economics, the function of economic theory, the meaning and uses of the explanatory variables "expectation" and "preference," economic theory as applied mathematics, neoclassical "dissidents" and their assumptions, and adaptationalism in economics. These studies promise to be most provocative and of great interest to economics and philosophy of science alike.