Thomas Boylan - Hahn and Economic Methodology

Hahn and Economic Methodology

Frank Hahn maintained a relentless critical attitude to economic methodology throughout his career, regarding it effectively as a fruitless activity that should be avoided. Yet, paradoxically, this did not inhibit Hahn from propounding a prescriptive approach to economic theorizing and the role and status of economic theory. In Hahn and Economic Methodology we provide the first book-length study of Hahns overall position on methodology, including his strident critique of certain methodological positions, and his positive methodological prescriptions and their rationale.

Hahn and Economic Methodology addresses two fundamental questions: (1) what is distinctive about economic theorizing; (2) what is the cognitive value of the outcome of this activity of economic theorizing? i.e. economic theory? We will argue that, for Hahn, economic theorizing is distinctive with respect to four dimensions. First, the aim of economic theory is neither to describe nor to explain the real economic world, as in the physical sciences. Rather, the aim is to achieve objective, but non-scientific, understanding. Second, the central question for economic theory remains, for Hahn, how to understand, but not to predict as in physics for instance, how decentralized choices interact and perhaps get co-ordinated. Third, Hahn identifies three commitments, without which, he argues, economic theorizing for him is not possible. Finally, economic theorizing has a distinctive approach, which Hahn calls its grammar of argumentation.

The two fundamental questions and these four dimensions of economic theorizing constitute both the holding frame of our investigation, and the central subject matter of this book, at the end of which readers should have a clearer overall view of Hahns reflections on economic methodology, which are always subtle, at times tantalizingly elusive, but always intriguing.

Thomas A. Boylan is Personal Professor of Economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Paschal F. OGorman is Personal Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Both Professors have collaborated over the last 20 years and have co-written and co-edited a number of books (all with Routledge), and they have published extensively in an array of international journals.

Routledge frontiers of political economy

1 Equilibrium Versus Understanding

Towards the rehumanization of economics within social theory
Mark Addleson

2 Evolution, Order and Complexity

Edited by Elias L. Khalil and Kenneth E. Boulding

3 Interactions in Political Economy

Malvern after ten years
Edited by Steven Pressman

4 The End of Economics

Michael Perelman

5 Probability in Economics

Omar F. Hamouda and Robin Rowley

6 Capital Controversy, Post Keynesian Economics and the History of Economics

Essays in honour of Geoff Harcourt, volume one
Edited by Philip Arestis, Gabriel Palma and Malcolm Sawyer

7 Markets, Unemployment and Economic Policy

Essays in honour of Geoff Harcourt, volume two
Edited by Philip Arestis, Gabriel Palma and Malcolm Sawyer

8 Social Economy

The logic of capitalist development
Clark Everling

9 New Keynesian Economics/Post Keynesian Alternatives

Edited by Roy J. Rotheim

10 The Representative Agent in Macroeconomics

James E. Hartley

11 Borderlands of Economics

Essays in honour of Daniel R. Fusfeld
Edited by Nahid Aslanbeigui and Young Back Choi

12 Value, Distribution and Capital

Essays in honour of Pierangelo Garegnani
Edited by Gary Mongiovi and Fabio Petri

13 The Economics of Science

Methodology and epistemology as if economics really mattered
James R. Wible

14 Competitiveness, Localised Learning and Regional Development

Specialisation and prosperity in small open economies
Peter Maskell, Heikki Eskelinen, Ingjaldur Hannibalsson, Anders Malmberg and Eirik Vatne

15 Labour Market Theory

A constructive reassessment
Ben J. Fine

16 Women and European Employment

Jill Rubery, Mark Smith, Colette Fagan and Damian Grimshaw

17 Explorations in Economic Methodology

From Lakatos to empirical philosophy of science
Roger Backhouse

18 Subjectivity in Political Economy

Essays on wanting and choosing
David P. Levine

19 The Political Economy of Middle East Peace

The impact of competing trade agendas
Edited by J.W. Wright, Jr

20 The Active Consumer

Novelty and surprise in consumer choice
Edited by Marina Bianchi

21 Subjectivism and Economic Analysis

Essays in memory of Ludwig Lachmann
Edited by Roger Koppl and Gary Mongiovi

22 Themes in Post-Keynesian Economics

Essays in honour of Geoff Harcourt, volume three
Edited by Claudio Sardoni and Peter Kriesler

23 The Dynamics of Technological Knowledge

Cristiano Antonelli

24 The Political Economy of Diet, Health and Food Policy

Ben J. Fine

25 The End of Finance

Capital market inflation, financial derivatives and pension fund capitalism
Jan Toporowski

26 Political Economy and the New Capitalism

Edited by Jan Toporowski

27 Growth Theory

A philosophical perspective
Patricia Northover

28 The Political Economy of the Small Firm

Edited by Charlie Dannreuther

29 Hahn and Economic Methodology

Thomas Boylan and Paschal F. OGorman

30 Gender, Growth and Trade

The miracle economies of the postwar years
David Kucera

31 Normative Political Economy

Subjective freedom, the market and the state
David Levine

32 Economist with a Public Purpose

Essays in honour of John Kenneth Galbraith
Edited by Michael Keaney

33 Involuntary Unemployment

The elusive quest for a theory
Michel De Vroey

34 The Fundamental Institutions of Capitalism

Ernesto Screpanti

35 Transcending Transaction

The search for self-generating markets
Alan Shipman

36 Power in Business and the State

An historical analysis of its concentration
Frank Bealey

37 Editing Economics

Essays in honour of Mark Perlman
Edited by Hank Lim, Ungsuh K. Park and Geoff Harcourt

38 Money, Macroeconomics and Keynes

Essays in honour of Victoria Chick, volume one
Edited by Philip Arestis, Meghnad Desai and Sheila Dow

39 Methodology, Microeconomics and Keynes

Essays in honour of Victoria Chick, volume two
Edited by Philip Arestis, Meghnad Desai and Sheila Dow

40 Market Drive and Governance

Reexamining the rules for economic and commercial contest
Ralf Boscheck

41 The Value of Marx

Political economy for contemporary capitalism
Alfredo Saad-Filho

42 Issues in Positive Political Economy

S. Mansoob Murshed

43 The Enigma of Globalization

A journey to a new stage of capitalism
Robert Went

44 The Market

Equilibrium, stability, mythology
S.N. Afriat

45 The Political Economy of Rule Evasion and Policy Reform

Jim Leitzel

46 Unpaid Work and the Economy

Edited by Antonella Picchio