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A Brain-Focused Foundation for Economic ScienceFrom Robbins to Friedman and Beyond

A Brain-Focused Foundation for Economic Science: From Robbins to Friedman and Beyond [In the early 1950s, Milton Friedman canonized neoclassical economics for his era of economists by accepting Robbins’ concept of scarcity as a core disciplinary concern and insisting that economists’ main concern was with “positive economics,” solely concerned with “what is,” not with what “ought to be” (the domain of “normative economics). He argued that economists’ empirical research must be guided by simplified models that need not, and could not, pass the test of descriptive reality. Indeed, he argued that no theory could be fully descriptive. Accordingly, “perfect rationality” and “perfect competition,” while lacking egregiously, in descriptiveness, were acceptable devices for analyses, especially if they eased analyses and if the predictions drawn from the models past repeated empirical tests. Neither Robbins nor Friedman made the economy within the human brain a central issue.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Brain-Focused Foundation for Economic ScienceFrom Robbins to Friedman and Beyond

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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
ISBN
978-3-319-76809-0
Pages
63 –92
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-76810-6_3
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[In the early 1950s, Milton Friedman canonized neoclassical economics for his era of economists by accepting Robbins’ concept of scarcity as a core disciplinary concern and insisting that economists’ main concern was with “positive economics,” solely concerned with “what is,” not with what “ought to be” (the domain of “normative economics). He argued that economists’ empirical research must be guided by simplified models that need not, and could not, pass the test of descriptive reality. Indeed, he argued that no theory could be fully descriptive. Accordingly, “perfect rationality” and “perfect competition,” while lacking egregiously, in descriptiveness, were acceptable devices for analyses, especially if they eased analyses and if the predictions drawn from the models past repeated empirical tests. Neither Robbins nor Friedman made the economy within the human brain a central issue.]

Published: Jun 7, 2018

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