Tony Lawson - Essays on: The Nature and State of Modern Economics

Essays on the Nature and State of Modern Economics

What do modern academic economists do? What currently is mainstream economics? What is neoclassical economics? And how about heterodox economics? How do the central concerns of modern economists, whatever their associations or allegiances, relate to those traditionally taken up in the discipline? And how did economics arrive at its current state? These and various cognate questions and concerns are systematically pursued in this new book by Tony Lawson. The result is a collection of previously published and new papers distinguished in providing the only comprehensive and coherent account of these issues currently available.

The financial crisis has not only revealed weaknesses of the capitalist economy but also highlighted just how limited and impoverished is modern academic economics. Despite the failings of the latter being more widely acknowledged now than ever, there is still an enormous amount of confusion about their source and true nature. In this collection, Tony Lawson also identifies the causes of the disciplines failings and outlines a transformative solution to its deficiencies.

Amongst other things, Lawson advocates for the adoption of a more historical and philosophical orientation to the study of economics, one that deemphasizes the current focus on mathematical modelling while maintaining a high level of analytical rigour. In so doing Lawson argues for a return to long term systematic and sustained projects, in the manner pursued by the likes of Marx, Veblen, Hayek, and Keynes, concerned first and foremost with advancing our understanding of social reality.

Overall, this forceful and persuasive collection represents a major intervention in the on-going debates about the nature, state, and future direction of economics.

Tony Lawson is Professorial Research Fellow of the Independent Social Research Foundation and Reader in Economics at Cambridge University, UK.

This is a book of genuine originality, something that is rare in modern academia and all too often confused with mere novelty. Few thinkers can legitimately claim to have had a significant impact on their chosen field. Fewer still can claim to have substantively changed the terms of debate of that field. Tony Lawson is one of those few. These essays are for anyone with an interest in the future of the discipline.

Jamie Morgan, Reader in Economics, Leeds Beckett University;

Co-editor, Real-World Economics Review

Tony Lawson has changed the conversation.

Edward Fullbrook, Executive Director of the World Economics Association

This book should be read by everyone concerned to remedy the deficiencies in economics exposed by the 2008 financial crisis. Through rigorous argument, Lawson shows that the answer is not more complex forms of mathematical modelling, but the adoption of methods that recognize the open-ended, relational, and processual character of economies.

Diane Elson, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, UK

Economics is notorious for a slapdash approach to its own methodology, best epitomised by Friedmans infamous assumptions dont matter paper. Samuelson rightly satirised Friedmans position as the F-twist, but despite this putdown, mainstream economists continue to use Friedmans obiter dictum as a way to escape having to consider the realism of their methods. Tony Lawson provides the L-correction to Friedmans F-twist, by forcing economics to consider its ontology. If the L-correction works, the reformed discipline of Economics may differ from Lawsons expectations, but it can only be improved by having to confront its current unrealism.

Steve Keen, Professor and Head of Economics, History &
Politics, Kingston University, London, UK

Tony Lawson is the enfant terrible of modern economic methodology. Whether you agree with him or not, he makes you think. This collection of (all but one) previously published papers is no exception. Highly recommended for all those with the slightest interest in the current state and nature of economic science.

Dimitris Milonakis, Professor of Political Economy and Dean
of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Crete, Greece

There has been a growing sense of discontent with the economics discipline since the outbreak of the Global Financial Crisis. Tony Lawson argues that the winter of our discontent should be seen as much deeper than the current debate conveystracing much further back in time than 2008, and at more fundamental methodological and analytical levels. Lawson writes with clarity and with an intellectual passion. A must read for any student of economics and political economy.

Peter Boettke, Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason
University, USA

For many years now Tony Lawson, whose background includes mathematics and philosophy as well as economics, has been making a sustained critique of the methodology and approaches of modern economics. In this important book, which should be required reading for all serious economists, regardless of their approach, Lawson sets out starkly and systematically the substances of his criticisms. He outlines the way forward towards constructive approaches in teaching, research, and policy, allied with avenues for fruitful dialogue between the criticisers and the criticised alike.

G.C. Harcourt, Professorial Fellow, University of New South Wales, Australia

Economics as Social Theory
Series edited by Tony Lawson

University of Cambridge

Social Theory is experiencing something of a revival within economics. Critical analyses of the particular nature of the subject matter of social studies and of the types of method, categories and modes of explanation that can legitimately be endorsed for the scientific study of social objects, are re-emerging. Economists are again addressing such issues as the relationship between agency and structure, between economy and the rest of society, and between the enquirer and the object of enquiry. There is a renewed interest in elaborating basic categories such as causation, competition, culture, discrimination, evolution, money, need, order, organization, power probability, process, rationality, technology, time, truth, uncertainty, value etc.

The objective for this series is to facilitate this revival further. In contemporary economics the label theory has been appropriated by a group that confines itself to largely asocial, ahistorical, mathematical modelling. Economics as Social Theory thus reclaims the Theory label, offering a platform for alternative rigorous, but broader and more critical conceptions of theorizing.

Other titles in this series include:

1. Economics and Language

Edited by Willie Henderson

2. Rationality, Institutions and Economic Methodology

Edited by Uskali Mki, Bo Gustafsson, and Christian Knudsen

3. New Directions in Economic Methodology

Edited by Roger Backhouse

4. Who Pays for the Kids?

Nancy Folbre

5. Rules and Choice in Economics

Viktor Vanberg

6. Beyond Rhetoric and Realism in Economics

Thomas A. Boylan and Paschal F. OGorman

7. Feminism, Objectivity and Economics

Julie A. Nelson

8. Economic Evolution

Jack J. Vromen

9. Economics and Reality

Tony Lawson

10. The Market

John O Neill

11. Economics and Utopia

Geoff Hodgson

12. Critical Realism in Economics

Edited by Steve Fleetwood

13. The New Economic Criticism

Edited by Martha Woodmansee and Mark Osteeen