IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zag/zirebs/v4y2001i1p1-26.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reflections on Economic Paradigms and Controversies in Economics

Author

Listed:
  • John S L McCombie

    (Downing College, Cambridge)

Abstract

This paper examines the question why many disputes in economics never seemed to be completely resolved. The essay provides an introduction to, and reconsiders, Kuhn’s notion of the paradigm as it applies to economics and argues that, far from being passé, it provides useful insights into this question. It is shown that the problem of incommensurability and the existence of differing paradigmatic assumptions explain much of the reason for the persistence of different schools of thought. Lakatos’s Methodology of the Scientific Research Programme is briefly discussed and its limitations noted. Finally, if there are no objective cannons of theory choice, then the reason why some economic paradigms flourish and others wither depends largely upon how persuasive their adherents are in convincing other economists. Consequently, McCloskey’s emphasis on the use of rhetoric in economics is considered.

Suggested Citation

  • John S L McCombie, 2001. "Reflections on Economic Paradigms and Controversies in Economics," Zagreb International Review of Economics and Business, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, vol. 4(1), pages 1-26, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:zag:zirebs:v:4:y:2001:i:1:p:1-26
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.efzg.hr/default.aspx?id=2694
    Download Restriction: Abstract only available on-line
    ---><---

    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. Stephen Keen & Timothy M. Lenton & Antoine Godin & Devrim Yilmaz & Matheus Grasselli & Timothy J. Garrett, 2021. "Economists' erroneous estimates of damages from climate change," Papers 2108.07847, arXiv.org.
    2. John S.L. McCombie & Ioana Negru, 2014. "On economic paradigms, rhetoric and the micro-foundations of macroeconomics," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 11(1), pages 53-66, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic Methodology; Paradigm; Rhetoric;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology

    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:zag:zirebs:v:4:y:2001:i:1:p:1-26. 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: Jurica Šimurina (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fefzghr.html .

    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.