The appropriate role of mathematics in economics has been controversial for two hundred years, and has been a matter of ongoing debate as economics became more mathematical after the Second World War. Controversy has been heightened after extensive criticisms of models used for analysis, prediction and risk assessment prior to the great financial crash of 2008. In this topical collection, Professor Hodgson brings together the seminal classic and recent essays published since 1945 on the role of mathematics in economics, by leading authors including six Nobel Laureates, and from a variety of perspectives.
Contents: Acknowledgements Introduction Geoffrey M. Hodgson PART I FROM THE FORMALIST REVOLUTION TO THE AEA COMMISSION 1. Mark Blaug (2003), 'The Formalist Revolution of the 1950s' 2. J.M. Clark (1947), 'Mathematical Economists and Others: A Plea for Communicability' 3. Kenneth E. Boulding (1948), 'Samuelson's Foundations: The Role of Mathematics in Economics' 4. Morris A. Copeland (1951), 'Institutional Economics and Model Analysis' 5. David Novick (1954), 'Mathematics: Logic, Quantity, and Method' 6. Paul A. Samuelson (1954), 'Some Psychological Aspects of Mathematics in Economics' 7. Stephen Enke (1955), 'More on the Misuse of Mathematics in Economics: A Rejoinder' 8. Wassily Leontief (1971), 'Theoretical Assumptions and Nonobserved Facts' 9. Alan Coddington (1975), 'Creaking Semaphore and Beyond: A Consideration of Shackle's "Epistemics and Economics"' 10. Alexander Rosenberg (1975), 'The Nomological Character of Microeconomics' 11. Herbert G. Grubel and Lawrence A. Boland (1986), 'On the Efficient Use of Mathematics in Economics: Some Theory, Facts and Results of an Opinion Survey' 12. Gerard Debreu (1986), 'Theoretic Models: Mathematical Form and Economic Content' 13. Herbert A. Simon (1986), 'The Failure of Armchair Economics [Interview]' 14. Gerard Debreu (1991), 'The Mathematization of Economic Theory' 15. Anne O. Krueger (1991), 'Report of the Commission on Graduate Education in Economics' 16. Alan S. Blinder (1990), 'Discussion' PART II MATHEMATICS, FIN DE SIeCLE: 1991 - 1999 17. Frank Hahn (1991), 'The Next Hundred Years' 18. Donald N. McCloskey (1991), 'Economics Science: A Search Through the Hyperspace of Assumptions?' 19. Philip Mirowski (1991), 'The When, the How and the Why of Mathematical Expression in the History of Economics Analysis' 20. E. Roy Weintraub and Philip Mirowski (1994), 'The Pure and the Applied: Bourbakism Comes to Mathematical Economics' 21. Munir Quddus and Salim Rashid (1994), 'The Overuse of Mathematics in Economics: Nobel Resistance' 22. Robert W. Clower (1995), 'Axiomatics in Economics' 23. Mark Blaug (1997), 'Ugly Currents in Modern Economics' 24. Peter J. Boettke (1997), 'Where Did Economics Go Wrong? Modern Economics as a Flight from Reality' 25. Paul Krugman (1998), 'Two Cheers for Formalism' 26. Roger E. Blackhouse (1998), 'If Mathematics is Informal, Then Perhaps We Should Accept that Economics Must be Informal Too' 27. Victoria Chick (1998), 'On Knowing One's Place: The Role of Formalism in Economics' PART III MILLENNIAL MATHEMATICS: METHODOLOGY AND ONTOLOGY 28. Robert Sugden (2000), 'Credible Worlds: The Status of Theoretical Models in Economics' 29. James M. Buchanan (2001), 'Game Theory, Mathematics, and Economics' 30. Victoria Chick and Sheila C. Dow (2001), 'Formalism, Logic and Reality: A Keynesian Analysis' 31. Ken Dennis (2002), 'Nominalising the Numeric: An Alternative to Mathematical Reduction in Economics' 32. Tony Lawson (2004), '"Reorienting Economics": On Heterodox Economics, Themata and the Use of Mathematics in Economics' 33. Uskali Maki (2005), 'Models are Experiments, Experiments are Models' 34. K. Vela Velupillai (2005), 'The Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Mathematics in Economics' 35. D. Wade Hands (2007), '2006 HES Presidential Address: A Tale of Two Mainstreams: Economics and Philosophy of Natural Science in the Mid-Twentieth Century' 36. Geoffrey M. Hodgson (2006), 'The Problem of Formalism in Economics' 37. Simon Mohun and Roberto Veneziani (2010), 'Reorienting Economics?' PART IV MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS AND THE GREAT CRASH OF 2008 38. David Colander, Hans Follmer, Armin Haas, Michael Goldberg, Katarina Juselius, Alan Kirman, Thomas Lux and Brigitte Sloth (2008), 'The Financial Crisis and the Systematic Failure of Academic Economics' 39. Tony Lawson (2009), 'The Current Economic Crisis: Its Nature and the Course of Academic Economics' 40. Timothy Besley and Peter Hennessy (2009), 'The Global Financial Crisis - Why Didn't Anyone Notice?' 41. Sh