Definition and reality in the general theory of political economy

List Of Tables -- List Of Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Economics Is A Historical Process -- 2. Realism In Economic Model Building -- 3. Economics As A Public Science -- 4. Surviving As A Slightly Out Of Sync Economist -- 5. Extracting Economic Information From Data: Methedology In An Empirical Discipline -- 6. The Social Science Of Wealth -- 7. What Is To Be Done (about Economics)? -- 8. Doing Applied Economics: Normative And Positive Aspects -- 9. How I Do Economics -- 10. Towards A Worthwhile Economics -- 11. How Should Economists Do Economics? A Pragmatic Perspective -- 12. How To Be A Crazy Economist -- 13. Doing The Economics Of Trust And Informal Institutions -- 14. The Predictive Science Of Economics? -- 15. Questions, Theory And Data -- 16. The Dark Side Of Economic Modeling -- 17. 'you're Not Making Sense, You're Just Being Logical' -- 18. Puzzle Solving: Reciprocity, Reasoning And Behavior -- 19. Doing Economics Without Homo Economicus -- 20. What Use Is Economic Theory? -- 21. A Dictum For Monetary Theory -- How Should Economists Do Economics? An Integrative Essay -- Index. Edited By Seven G. Medema, Warren J. Samuels. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. This work features original essays from leading scholars in the discipline - each of which address the how should economists do economics? What emerges is a diverse, constructive commentary on how economics is done and how it should be done. Leading thinkers from a wide variety of perspectives and fields address issues such as the scope of economics, the corpus of theory and its stature, the process of theory construction, the place of mathematical formalism, the role of quantitative analysis, the place of institutions in economic analysis, and, inter alia, technical methods of research. "Foundations of reasearch in how do economists do economics?" brings together some of the leading figures from many different schools of thought. This volume ranges across all aspects of professional discourse, ensuring that it will be widely read by economists active in many different areas of research while being of particular interest to economic theorists, methodologists and historians of economics. This stimulating and authoritative book features original essays from leading scholars in the discipline - each of which addresses the question: how should economists do economics? What emerges is a diverse, constructive commentary on how economics is done and how it should be done. Leading thinkers from a wide variety of perspectives and fields address issues such as the scope of economics, the corpus of theory and its stature, the process of theory construction, the place of mathematical formalism, the role of quantitative analysis, the place of institutions in economic analysis, and, inter alia, technical methods of research In 21 prescriptive rather than descriptive treatments, well known academic economists set out how they think the discipline should be practiced both internally and in relation to other fields and arenas of society. They explore economics as a historical process and as a public science, realism in model buildings, social science, normative and positive aspects, extracting information from data, and worthwhile economics. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR