IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/eujhet/v26y2019i5p879-910.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Explanatory value in context: the curious case of Hotelling’s location model

Author

Listed:
  • N. Emrah Aydinonat
  • Emin Köksal

Abstract

There is a striking contrast between the significance of Harold Hotelling’s contribution to industrial economics and the fact that his location model was invalid, unrealistic and non-robust. It is difficult to make sense of the explanatory value of Hotelling’s model based on philosophical accounts that emphasize logical validity, representational adequacy, and robustness as determinants of explanatory value. However, these accounts are misleading because they overlook the context within which the explanatory value added of a model is apprehensible. We present Hotelling’s model in its historical context and show why it is an important and explanatory model despite its apparent deficiencies.

Suggested Citation

  • N. Emrah Aydinonat & Emin Köksal, 2019. "Explanatory value in context: the curious case of Hotelling’s location model," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(5), pages 879-910, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:879-910
    DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2019.1626460
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09672567.2019.1626460
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09672567.2019.1626460?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas Byrne & Sándor P. Fekete & Jörg Kalcsics & Linda Kleist, 2023. "Competitive location problems: balanced facility location and the One-Round Manhattan Voronoi Game," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 321(1), pages 79-101, February.
    2. Łukasz Hardt, 2023. "On the Modelling Method in Adam Smith’s Economic Thought," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 1, pages 3-18.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:879-910. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REJH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.