The Temporalities of Economics: The Model Form of Economic Theory

经济学的时间性：经济理论的模型形式

• 批准号: 244509751
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Andreas Langenohl
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Soziologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Priority Programmes
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2012-12-31 至 2016-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/244509751?language=en
• 关键词: Temporalities; Economics; Model; Form; Economic

The proposed project investigates the emergence of modeling techniques in economics, in particular econometrics and financial economics, since the second half of the 19th century. At the core of the project is the reconstruction of models of economic temporality as they refer to the problématique, emerging in modernity, of future’s contingency, that is, to the temporalization of contingency. The project starts out from a constructivist reading of sociological theories of societal differentiation, arguing that the emergence of societal subsystems comes along with the crystallization of semantics that not only reduce contingency but also produce a meaning surplus. In the case of the differentiation of economics in the second half of the 19th century, this process materializes in an increasing attention toward mathematical models. These models presuppose the construction of an auto-referentiality based on mathematical symbols which are radically decoupled from any substantial signifier outside the mathematical model, thus enabling economics to produce surplus meaning through the ‘discovery’ of formal patterns in the models. Thereby, the emergence and development of such mathematized economic models is bound up with the necessity to work the temporalization of contingency by making such contingency computable in formal models. The proposed project thus refers to the agenda of the SPP 1688 “Ästhetische Eigenzeiten” through the argument that temporality prominently figures in those models as they attempt to cope with the temporalization of contingency through their specific formal shape. The project’s empirical basis, which will be investigated through a discourse-analytically oriented sociology of knowledge (in particular qualitative content analysis), is a series of turning points in economic modeling, starting out with the marginal utility approach since the 1860s and ending with contemporary discussions in mathematical finance. The genealogical reconstruction of model forms and their temporal implications pays particular attention to challenges and critiques issued against the models and the reactions to those critiques. The data corpus comprises academic publications such as monographs, journal articles, and edited volumes. Equal importance is dedicated to interrelations between economics and other scientific disciplines as they impact on the articulation of economic temporality in the models (for instance, mechanics in the case of marginal utility theory, ecology in the case of equilibrium theory, and psychology as concerns Behavioral finance), as well as to the tracing of ‘successful’ argumentative patterns but also of those which have been left behind (such as, for instance, the marginalization of the theory of rational expectations in contemporary finance).

这个拟议的项目调查了自19世纪下半叶以来经济学中建模技术的出现，特别是计量经济学和金融经济学。该项目的核心是重建经济临时性模型，因为它们指的是现代性中出现的未来偶然性的问题，即偶然性的时间化。该项目从对社会分化的社会学理论的建构主义解读开始，认为社会子系统的出现伴随着语义的结晶，这些语义不仅减少了偶然性，而且产生了意义剩余。在19世纪下半叶经济学分化的情况下，这一过程体现为对数学模型的日益关注。这些模型的前提是基于数学符号的自动指涉的构建，这些数学符号与数学模型之外的任何实质性能指从根本上分离，从而使经济学能够通过在模型中发现形式模式来产生多余的意义。因此，这种数学化经济模型的出现和发展与通过使这种偶然性在形式模型中可计算来实现偶然性的时间化工作的必要性有关。因此，拟议的项目提到了SPP 1688的议程，其论点是，时间性在这些模型中占有突出地位，因为它们试图通过其特定的形式形状来应对偶然性的时间化。该项目的经验基础将通过以话语分析为导向的知识社会学(特别是定性内容分析)进行调查，它是经济建模的一系列转折点，从19世纪60年代以来的边际效用方法开始，以当代数学金融学的讨论结束。对模型形式及其时间含义的谱系重建特别关注对模型提出的挑战和批评以及对这些批评的反应。数据语料库包括学术出版物，如专著、期刊文章和编辑过的卷。经济学和其他科学学科之间的相互关系也同样重要，因为它们影响到模型中经济暂时性的表述(例如，边际效用理论中的力学，均衡理论中的生态学，以及行为金融学中的心理学)，以及对“成功的”论证模式的追踪，但也对那些被落在后面的模式的追踪(例如，理性预期理论在当代金融学中的边缘化)。