IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-349-12371-1_9.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Economics as a Science and its Relation to Policy: The Example of Free Trade

In: Essays on the Methodology and Discourse of Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Warren J. Samuels

    (Michigan State University)

Abstract

Economic controversy has centred on questions of substantive doctrine, the conflict of schools and ideologies, and issues of scope and method. Somewhat more peripheral but no less fundamental in importance have been controversies over the social role of economists and the relation of economic theory (or science) to policy. These have involved the tension between the desire for analysis free of ideology or values, on the one hand, and the more or less reluctant belief in the inevitability of ideological or valuational elements, on the other;1 whether economic principles are independent of practical affairs or are applicable, directly or indirectly, to matters of policy; whether economic theory is an engine of inquiry or a corpus of truth; and, in general, the nature of economics as a science and its relation to policy. In all these and other respects, there have been considerable diversity, ambiguity, and conflict of views.

Suggested Citation

  • Warren J. Samuels, 1992. "Economics as a Science and its Relation to Policy: The Example of Free Trade," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Essays on the Methodology and Discourse of Economics, chapter 8, pages 130-153, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-12371-1_9
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-12371-1_9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Bruno S. Frey, 2000. "Was Bewirkt die Volkswirtschaftslehre?," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(1), pages 5-33, February.
    2. William Milberg, 1999. "The Rhetoric of Policy Relevance in International Economics," Macroeconomics 9904009, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Bruno Frey, 2006. "How Influential is Economics?," De Economist, Springer, vol. 154(2), pages 295-311, June.

    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:pal:palchp:978-1-349-12371-1_9. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    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.