Epistemological Status of Models and Thought Experiments in Economics

Author:

Koshovets O.1,Varkhotov T.2

Affiliation:

1. Institute of Economics, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia)

2. Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia)

Abstract

The paper considers the analogy of theoretical modeling and thought experiment in economics. The authors provide historical and epistemological analysis of thought experiments and their relations to the material experiments in natural science. They conclude that thought experiments as instruments are used both in physics and in economics, but in radically different ways. In the natural science, a thought experiment is tightly connected to the material experimentation, while in economics it is used in isolation. Material experiments serve as a means to demonstrate the reality, while thought experiments cannot be a full-fledged instrument of studying the reality. Rather, they constitute the instrument of structuring the field of inquiry.

Publisher

NP Voprosy Ekonomiki

Subject

Economics and Econometrics,Finance

Reference44 articles.

1. Blaug M. (1980). The Methodology of Economics, Or, How Economists Explain. Moscow: Voprosy Ekonomiki. (In Russian).

2. Wallerstein I. (2003). The End of the World As We Know It: Social Science for the Twenty-first Century. Moscow: EKSMO. (In Russian).

3. Walras L. (2000). Elements of Pure Economics. Moscow: Isograf. (In Russian).

4. Wartofsky М. (1988). Models. Representation and the Scientific Understanding. Moscow: Progress. (In Russian).

5. Varhotov T., Koshovets O. (2014). The Basic Concepts and Thought Experiments in Economics. Obshchestvo i Ekonomika, No. 4, pp. 25—41. (In Russian).

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