1、This page intentionally left blankThe Methodology of Positive EconomicsMilton Friedmans 1953 essay “The methodology of positive econom-ics” remains the most cited, influential, and controversial piece of meth-odologicalwritingintwentieth-centuryeconomics.Sinceitsappearance,the essay has shaped the i
2、mage of economics as a scientific discipline,both within and outside academia. At the same time, there has been anongoing controversy over the proper interpretation and normative eval-uation of the essay. Perceptions have been sharply divided, with someviewing economics as a scientific success thank
3、s to its adherence toFriedmans principles, others taking it as a failure for the same reason.In this book, a team of world-renowned experts in the methodology ofeconomics cast new light on Friedmans methodological arguments andpractices from a variety of perspectives. It provides the twenty-first-ce
4、ntury reader with an invaluable assessment of the impact and contem-porary significance of Friedmans seminal work.Uskali Mki is Academy Professor at the Academy of Finland. He haswritten extensively on the philosophy and methodology of economicsand is editor of a number of books, including The Econo
5、mic World View(Cambridge University Press, 2001), Fact and Fiction in Economics(Cambridge University Press, 2002), and Handbook of the Philosophy ofEconomics (2009).The Methodology of PositiveEconomicsReflections on the Milton Friedman legacyEdited byUskali MkiCAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSCambridge, Ne
6、w York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So PauloCambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UKFirst published in print formatISBN-13 978-0-521-86701-6ISBN-13 978-0-521-68686-0ISBN-13 978-0-511-53988-6 Cambridge University Press 20092009Information on this title: www
7、.cambridge.org/9780521867016This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any partmay take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.Cambridge University Press has no resp
8、onsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Pre
9、ss, New Yorkwww.cambridge.orgpaperbackeBook (EBL)hardbackFor INEMContentsList of figures page ixList of tables xContributors xiPreface xviiPart 1 The classical essay in twentieth-century economicmethodology 1The methodology of positive economics (1953)milton friedman 3Part 2 Reading and writing a cl
10、assic 451 Reading the methodological essay in twentieth-centuryeconomics: map of multiple perspectivesuskali mki 472 Early drafts of Friedmans methodology essayj. daniel hammond 683 Unrealistic assumptions and unnecessary confusions:rereading and rewriting F53 as a realist statementuskali mki 90Part
11、 3 Models, assumptions, predictions, evidence 1174 The influence of Friedmans methodological essaythomas mayer 1195 Did Milton Friedmans positive methodology licensethe formalist revolution?d. wade hands 143vii6 Appraisal of evidence in economic methodologymelvin w. reder 1657 The politics of positi
12、vism: disinterested predictions frominterested agentsdavid teira serrano and jess ZAMORA BONILLA 189Part 4 Theoretical context: firm, money, expected utility,Walras and Marshall 2158 Friedmans 1953 essay and the marginalist controversyroger e. backhouse 2179 Friedman (1953) and the theory of the fir
13、moliver e. williamson 24110 Friedmans selection argument revisitedjack vromen 25711 Expected utility and Friedmans risky methodologychris starmer 28512 Milton Friedmans stance: the methodologyof causal realismkevin d. hoover 30313 On the right side for the wrong reason: Friedman on theMarshallWalras
14、 dividemichel de vroey 321Part 5 Concluding perspectives 34714 The debate over F53 after fifty yearsmark blaug 34915 Final wordmilton friedman 355Index 356viii ContentsFigures9.1 The sciences of choice and contract page 25111.1 Action/state payoff matrix 29312.1 The reception of Friedmans positivism
15、 and the fate of causallanguage in econometrics 318ixTables4.1 Effect of changes in economics on the acceptanceof F53 page 1254.2 The Nobel Prize lectures and Friedmans criteria 13312.1 Uses of causal language in Friedman and SchwartzsMonetary History of the United States, 18671960 30712.2 Examples
16、of synonyms for causal language from Friedmanand Schwartzs Monetary History of the United States,18671960 308xContributorsroger e. backhouse is Professor of the History and Philosophy ofEconomics at the University of Birmingham. He is author of ThePenguin History of Economics / The Ordinary Business
17、 of Life (2002) andmany books and articles on the history of economics in the twentiethcentury and on economic methodology. He has edited several volumeson economic methodology and is a former editor of the Journal ofEconomic Methodology. He is past Chair of the International Networkfor Economic Met
18、hod.mark blaug is Professor Emeritus of the University of London andBuckingham University, UK, and Visiting Professor of Economics atthe University of Amsterdam and Erasmus University of Rotterdam,the Netherlands. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a ForeignHonorary Member of the Royal Nether
19、lands Academy of Arts andSciences. His principal fields of interest are economic methodologyand the history of economic thought. His publications includeIntroduction to the Economics of Education (1970), The Methodology ofEconomics (1980), Great Economists since Keynes (1985), EconomicHistory and th
20、e History of Economics (1987), The Economics of Educationand the Education of an Economist (1987), Economic Theories. True orFalse? (1990), Not Only an Economist. Recent Essays (1997), Whos Whoin Economics, ed. (1999).kevin d. hoover is Professor of Economics and Philosophy at DukeUniversity. He rec
21、eived his D.Phil from Oxford University. He waspreviously a Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and alecturer at Balliol College and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, as well asaresearchassociate andvisitingeconomist attheFederal ReserveBankofSanFrancisco.HeistheauthorofCausalityinMacroeconomicsa
22、ndTheMethodology of Empirical Macroeconomics (both Cambridge UniversityPress, 2001), and of numerous articles in macroeconomics, monetaryeconomics,economicmethodology,andthephilosophyofscience.Heisxialso the editor of Macroeconometrics: Developments, Tensions, andProspects (1995) and Real Business C
23、ycle: A Reader (1998). Hoover ispast President of the History of Economics Society, past Chairman ofthe International Network for Economic Methodology and a formereditor of the Journal of Economic Methodology. Hoover is best knownfor his work on causality and on the new classical macroeconomics.The
24、latter work began with “Two types of monetarism” (Journal ofEconomic Literature, 1984), which contained a careful examination ofMilton Friedmans economics and methodology, trying to locate whyFriedman disassociated himself from his apparent followers such asLucas and Sargent. These themes were furth
25、er developed in The NewClassical Macroeconomics (1988).j. daniel hammond is Professor of Economics at Wake ForestUniversity, Winston-Salem, NC. He received his PhD from theUniversity of Virginia, and has published in monetary economics,economic methodology, and history of economics. He has writtenex
26、tensively on the history of University of Chicago economics,including Theory and Measurement: Causality Issues in MiltonFriedmans Monetary Economics (Cambridge University Press, 1996),Making Chicago Price Theory: Friedman-Stigler Correspondence 19451957 (editor with Claire H. Hammond, Routledge, 200
27、6), and “Aninterview with Milton Friedman on methodology,” Research in theHistory of Economic Thought and Methodology (1992). Hammond hasserved as an elected member of the executive committee of the Historyof Economics Society, and in 20012 as the Societys president.d. wade hands is Professor of Eco
28、nomics at the University of PugetSound in Tacoma, WA. He has published widely on various topics inthe history of economic thought and economic methodology. Some ofhispublishedworkisaboutthehistoryandmethodologyoftheChicagoschool,ofwhichMiltonFriedmanisamember.HismostrecentbookisReflection Without Ru
29、les (Cambridge University Press, 2001). He is alsoone of the editors (along with John Davis and Uskali Mki) of TheHandbook of Economic Methodology (1998). His textbook IntroductoryMathematical Economics is in its second edition (2003). He is an editorof the Journal of Economic Methodology.uskali mki
30、 is Academy Professor at the Academy of Finlandand former Professor at the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy andEconomics. He has published on the assumptions issue, realism andrealisticness, idealizations and models, causation, explanation, therhetoric, sociology, and economics of economics, and the
31、 foundationsxii List of contributorsof New Institutional and Austrian economics; in journals such as theJournal of Economic Literature, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Studies inthe History and Philosophy of Science, Perspectives on Science, Erkenntnis,Kyklos, Journal of Economic Methodology, His
32、tory of Political Economy,Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge Journal of Economics. He is editorof The Economic World View: Studies in the Ontology of Economics(Cambridge University Press, 2001); Fact and Fiction in Economics:Models, Realism, and Social Construction (Cambridge University Press,2002)
33、; and a co-editor of The Handbook of Economic Methodology(1998); Economics and Methodology. Crossing Boundaries (1998);Rationality, Institutions and Economic Methodology (1993). He is ChairoftheInternationalNetworkforEconomicMethodandaformereditorof the Journal of Economic Methodology.thomas mayer w
34、as born in Vienna in 1927, emigrated to England in1938 and to the United States in 1944. He received his BA fromQueens College, CUNY, in 1948 and his PhD from ColumbiaUniversity in 1953. He taught at West Virginia University, Universityof Notre Dame, Michigan State University, University of Californ
35、iaat Berkeley, and for most of his professional life as professor at theUniversity of California at Davis from which he retired in 1992. Hisinitial interests were macroeconomics, monetary theory, and policy,where he could best be classified either as an eclectic or a moderatemonetarist. Much of his
36、work has addressed Friedmans monetaristthinking. Shortly before retirement he shifted mainly to methodologywhere he advocated a de-emphasis on formalist economics. Duringthis period, he has published on Friedmans methodology. He is theauthor of Permanent Income, Wealth and Consumption; The Structure
37、 ofMonetarism (with others); Money, Banking and the Economy (withJ. Duesenberry and R. Aliber); Monetarism and Monetary Policy; Truthvs.PrecisioninEconomics;DoingEconomicResearch;MonetaryPolicy;andThe Great Inflation in the United States. He lives in Berkeley, California,and is a citizen of the USA.
38、melvin w. reder is Gladys G. and Isidore Brown Professor of Urbanand Labor Economics Emeritus at the Graduate School of Business atthe University of Chicago; previously Professor of Economics atStanford University. Book publications include Economics: the Cultureof a Controversial Science (1999), Ra
39、tionality in Psychology and Economics(coeditor) (1986), Labor in a Growing Economy (1957), Studies in theTheory of Welfare Economics (1947).List of contributors xiiichris starmer is Professor of Experimental Economics at theUniversity of Nottingham, UK. Starmer was awarded a PhD for anexperimental i
40、nvestigation of decision under risk in 1992 from theUniversity of East Anglia (UEA). He worked as Lecturer then SeniorLecturerat UEA and was visiting Associate Professorat Caltech beforemoving to Nottingham in 2000. His main research interests havefocused on experimental economics, theories of decis
41、ion making andeconomic methodology. This combination makes him the best experton Friedmans work on expected utility and on methodology. Starmerhas published articles on these topics in American Economic Review,Econometrica, Economic Journal, Economica, Journal of EconomicLiterature, Journal of Econo
42、mic Methodology, Quarterly Journal ofEconomics, and Review of Economic Studies. Starmer is currentlyDirector of the Centre for Decision Research and ExperimentalEconomics (CeDEx) at the University of Nottingham.david teira serrano is associate professor in the Department ofLogic, History and Philoso
43、phy of Science (UNED, Madrid) andresearch associate of the Urrutia Elejalde Foundation. His PhDthesis, Azar, economa y poltica en Milton Friedman, won the bestdissertation award of the Spanish Society for Logic and Philosophy ofSciencefortheperiod20013.HehaspublishedpapersintheJournalofEconomic Meth
44、odology,History of PoliticalEconomyandStudies in Historyand Philosophy of Science, among other journals.jack vromen is professor of the philosophy of science at the Faculty ofPhilosophy of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he is also partof EIPE (Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics)
45、. His mainresearch interest is in philosophy of economics, with a special focus onconceptual and meta-theoretical aspects of the relation betweenevolutionary biology and evolutionary theorizing in economics. Hehas published on Friedmans and Alchians evolutionary argument inthe theory of the firm. Re
46、cent publications include “Ontologicalcommitments of evolutionary economics,” in The Economic WorldView (ed. Uskali Mki, Cambridge University Press, 2001), and“Stone Age minds and group selection what difference do theymake?” in Constitutional Political Economy (2002) and “Cognitivetheory meets evol
47、utionary theory what promise does evolutionarypsychology hold out for economics?” in Cognitive Developments inEconomics (ed. S. Rizzello, 2003). He is a past member of theExecutive Board of INEM (The International Network for EconomicMethodology) and Book Review Editor of the Journal of EconomicMeth
48、odology.xiv List of contributorsoliver p. williamson is Professor ofthe Graduate Schooland EdgarF. Kaiser Professor Emeritus of Business, Economics, and Law at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. Williamson is a member of theNational Academy of Sciences (USA) and a Fellow of the AmericanAcademy o
49、f Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society. He is apast president of the American Law and Economics Association, theWesternEconomicsAssociation,andtheInternationalSocietyforNewInstitutional Economics. His books include Markets and Hierarchies(1975), The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (1985), and TheMechanisms of Governance (1996).jess p. zamora bonilla is PhD in Philosophy and in Economics,professor of Philosophy of Science at Universidad Nacional deEducacion a Distancia (Madrid, Spain), as well as AcademicCoordinator of the Urrutia El
