The Friedman-Lucas Transition in Macroeconomics: A Structuralist Approach

The Friedman-Lucas Transition in Macroeconomics: A Structuralist Approach
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Methodology…?! Why?
1.1 Economic methodology as a juvenile subdiscipline suggesting some new aspects for theoretical analyses
1.1.1 Emergence and development
1.1.2 Academic centres and organizations
1.2 Major methodological problems in contemporary macroeconomics
1.2.1 Some preliminary remarks on the history of modern macroeconomics
1.2.2 Complexity
1.2.3 Connections to politics
1.2.4 The broader scientific environment: Connections to heterodoxy
1.2.5 Looking ahead: What needs to be done?
1.3 On scientific realism in general
1.3.1 Scientific realism as an optimistic and ambitious philosophy
1.3.2 Arguments for scientific realism
1.3.3 Arguments against scientific realism
1.3.4 Then what is scientific realism?
1.4 Uskali Mäki’s realist philosophy of economics: A quick overview
1.5 A case study: Some methodological aspects of the controversy between neoclassical orthodoxy and institutionalism
1.5.1 A methodological demarcation
Some basic questions of the institutionalist methodology
Some methodological compromises in institutionalism
1.5.2 Scientific languages and the impossibility of mutual understanding
1.5.3 Safeguarding a theory against empirical evidence
From laws to fragmentary analyses
Protecting the core in a research tradition
1.5.4 A critique of the critique
1.6 Conclusions: Why is methodology so important?
Suggested readings
References
Archival sources
2 Standing on the edge: Lucas in the Chicago tradition
2.1 Changing Chicago economics
2.1.1 Continuity through breaks: A strong price-theoretic tradition
Friedman as a domineering character of post-war Chicago economics
Towards the imperialism of economics
2.1.2 Chicago economics as an education programme: From a battle against ignorance to analytical rigour
Bringing the Cores to the fore
Friedman’s Price theory sequence
Workshops for research training
2.2 The Marshall–Walras divide
2.2.1 Characterizing Marshall’s methodology: Simplicity in mathematics to build connections with reality
2.2.2 Friedman’s interpretation of Marshall: Neglecting causal complexity
2.2.3 Friedman’s Marshallian empiricism
The National Bureau of Economic Research
The Cowles Commission
2.2.4 The Marshall–Walras divide in a new guise: Sims on the need for ‘atheoretical’ VARs
2.3 The transition in theoretical terms: Money, monetary and fiscal policy
2.3.1 Friedman on money and monetary policy
2.3.2 Lucas and new classical macroeconomics on money and monetary policy
Monetary policy as the source and absorber of shocks
Disentangling Hume’s surmise
2.3.3 New Keynesian modelling: Contributions to clarifying the limitations to the inefficiency of monetary policy
2.3.4 Curtailing the potential of fiscal policy
2.4 Conclusions: Arguments for dampening the contrast between Friedman and Lucas
Suggested readings
References
Archival sources
3 Agents and structures
3.1 Microfoundations in the Friedman–Lucas transition: Some basics
3.1.1 Friedman and the microfoundations: The problem of the underlying properties
3.1.2 Microfoundations á la Lucas: Choice-theoretic framework, general equilibrium, and voluntary unemployment
3.1.3 Some critiques: Supervenience and reducibility
3.2 Realism in trouble: The need for selectivity
3.2.1 Entity realism
3.2.2 Structural realism
Epistemic structural realism
Ontic structural realism
3.2.3 A critique of selective realisms: The way to semirealism
3.3 Causation and structures
3.4 Representing structures
3.4.1 A quick overview on how to use abstraction and idealization in representing structures
3.4.2 Some arguments against an OSR-based reconstruction of economics
3.4.3 Commonsensibles in economics
3.5 Conclusions for economics: Distinguishing descriptive accuracy and causal adequacy
Suggested readings
References
Archival sources
4 Realism and instrumentalism along the Friedman–Lucas transition
4.1 Friedman’s case: Descriptive inaccuracy and causal inadequacy
4.1.1 The first attempt: Friedman’s instrumentalism in a Weberian reading
Knight’s social scientific methodology and its Weberian roots
Friedman’s instrumentalism in the context of descriptive accuracy and causal adequacy
Arguments for the instrumentalist reading of F53
4.1.2 The second attempt: The instrumentalist foundations of Friedman’s Phillips curves
4.2 Lucas’s case: Descriptive inaccuracy and causal adequacy
4.2.1 The basic requirements and the traces of understanding
4.2.2 Imitation and some underlying considerations: How to construct ‘useful’ analogue systems?
4.2.3 The information structure underlying the island models of 1972–75
4.2.4 Constructing descriptively false assumptions with a view to sound causal understanding
4.2.5 Microfoundations to connect analogue systems with reality
4.3 Conclusions: The dynamics of causal adequacy along the Friedman–Lucas transition
4.3.1 Some preliminary structuralist considerations: A reminder
4.3.2 Representing the structure via highlighting real entity properties
4.3.3 Technology, taste, money
Suggested readings
References
Archival sources
5 The end of economics?
5.1 Hermeneutics in the history and methodology of economics
5.2 Interpreting Lucas on a broad textual basis
5.3 How Friedman and Lucas fit into Mäki’s framework: An assessment
5.4 Epilogue
Suggested readings
References
Index
A
B
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D
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