انتقال فریدمن-لوکاس در اقتصاد کلان: رویکرد ساختاری‌گرا

The core idea of the Chicago economics tradition is to interpret a vast array of individual and social actions as the outcomes of informed decisions. To address the problem of business cycles in a choice-theoretic framework, economists need artificial economies made up of representative agents. Taking societies as structures and agents as relata places macroeconomics upon microfoundations, though in theory assessment the way structures and causal connections are dependent upon agent-level properties ought to be taken into account. Along these lines The Friedman-Lucas Transition in Macroeconomics considers how and to what extent monetarist and new classical theories of the business-cycle can be regarded as approximately true descriptions of a cycle's causal structure, or whether they can be no more than useful predictive instruments. It will be of interest to upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, and professionals concerned with practical, theoretical and historical aspects of macroeconomics and business-cycle modeling. The Friedman-Lucas Transition in Macroeconomics: A Structuralist Approach Foreword Preface Acknowledgements 1 Methodology...?! Why? 1.1 Economic methodology as a juvenile subdiscipline suggesting some new aspects for theoretical analyses 1.1.1 Emergence and development 1.1.2 Academic centres and organizations 1.2 Major methodological problems in contemporary macroeconomics 1.2.1 Some preliminary remarks on the history of modern macroeconomics 1.2.2 Complexity 1.2.3 Connections to politics 1.2.4 The broader scientific environment: Connections to heterodoxy 1.2.5 Looking ahead: What needs to be done? 1.3 On scientific realism in general 1.3.1 Scientific realism as an optimistic and ambitious philosophy 1.3.2 Arguments for scientific realism 1.3.3 Arguments against scientific realism 1.3.4 Then what is scientific realism? 1.4 Uskali Mäki’s realist philosophy of economics: A quick overview 1.5 A case study: Some methodological aspects of the controversy between neoclassical orthodoxy and institutionalism 1.5.1 A methodological demarcation Some basic questions of the institutionalist methodology Some methodological compromises in institutionalism 1.5.2 Scientific languages and the impossibility of mutual understanding 1.5.3 Safeguarding a theory against empirical evidence From laws to fragmentary analyses Protecting the core in a research tradition 1.5.4 A critique of the critique 1.6 Conclusions: Why is methodology so important? Suggested readings References Archival sources 2 Standing on the edge: Lucas in the Chicago tradition 2.1 Changing Chicago economics 2.1.1 Continuity through breaks: A strong price-theoretic tradition Friedman as a domineering character of post-war Chicago economics Towards the imperialism of economics 2.1.2 Chicago economics as an education programme: From a battle against ignorance to analytical rigour Bringing the Cores to the fore Friedman’s Price theory sequence Workshops for research training 2.2 The Marshall–Walras divide 2.2.1 Characterizing Marshall’s methodology: Simplicity in mathematics to build connections with reality 2.2.2 Friedman’s interpretation of Marshall: Neglecting causal complexity 2.2.3 Friedman’s Marshallian empiricism The National Bureau of Economic Research The Cowles Commission 2.2.4 The Marshall–Walras divide in a new guise: Sims on the need for ‘atheoretical’ VARs 2.3 The transition in theoretical terms: Money, monetary and fiscal policy 2.3.1 Friedman on money and monetary policy 2.3.2 Lucas and new classical macroeconomics on money and monetary policy Monetary policy as the source and absorber of shocks Disentangling Hume’s surmise 2.3.3 New Keynesian modelling: Contributions to clarifying the limitations to the inefficiency of monetary policy 2.3.4 Curtailing the potential of fiscal policy 2.4 Conclusions: Arguments for dampening the contrast between Friedman and Lucas Suggested readings References Archival sources 3 Agents and structures 3.1 Microfoundations in the Friedman–Lucas transition: Some basics 3.1.1 Friedman and the microfoundations: The problem of the underlying properties 3.1.2 Microfoundations á la Lucas: Choice-theoretic framework, general equilibrium, and voluntary unemployment 3.1.3 Some critiques: Supervenience and reducibility 3.2 Realism in trouble: The need for selectivity 3.2.1 Entity realism 3.2.2 Structural realism Epistemic structural realism Ontic structural realism 3.2.3 A critique of selective realisms: The way to semirealism 3.3 Causation and structures 3.4 Representing structures 3.4.1 A quick overview on how to use abstraction and idealization in representing structures 3.4.2 Some arguments against an OSR-based reconstruction of economics 3.4.3 Commonsensibles in economics 3.5 Conclusions for economics: Distinguishing descriptive accuracy and causal adequacy Suggested readings References Archival sources 4 Realism and instrumentalism along the Friedman–Lucas transition 4.1 Friedman’s case: Descriptive inaccuracy and causal inadequacy 4.1.1 The first attempt: Friedman’s instrumentalism in a Weberian reading Knight’s social scientific methodology and its Weberian roots Friedman’s instrumentalism in the context of descriptive accuracy and causal adequacy Arguments for the instrumentalist reading of F53 4.1.2 The second attempt: The instrumentalist foundations of Friedman’s Phillips curves 4.2 Lucas’s case: Descriptive inaccuracy and causal adequacy 4.2.1 The basic requirements and the traces of understanding 4.2.2 Imitation and some underlying considerations: How to construct ‘useful’ analogue systems? 4.2.3 The information structure underlying the island models of 1972–75 4.2.4 Constructing descriptively false assumptions with a view to sound causal understanding 4.2.5 Microfoundations to connect analogue systems with reality 4.3 Conclusions: The dynamics of causal adequacy along the Friedman–Lucas transition 4.3.1 Some preliminary structuralist considerations: A reminder 4.3.2 Representing the structure via highlighting real entity properties 4.3.3 Technology, taste, money Suggested readings References Archival sources 5 The end of economics? 5.1 Hermeneutics in the history and methodology of economics 5.2 Interpreting Lucas on a broad textual basis 5.3 How Friedman and Lucas fit into Mäki’s framework: An assessment 5.4 Epilogue Suggested readings References Index A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P R S T U V W The Friedman-Lucas Transition in Macroeconomics: A Structuralist Approach considers how and to what extent monetarist and new classical theories of the business-cycle can be regarded as approximately true descriptions of a cycle's causal structure or whether they can be no more than useful predictive instruments. This book will be of interest to upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers and professionals concerned with practical, theoretical and historical aspects of macroeconomics and business-cycle modeling. Offers a wide selection of Robert Lucas's unpublished works Discusses the history of business-cycle theories in the context of methodological advancements Suggests effective arguments for emphasizing the key role of representative agents and their assumed properties in macro-modeling