From Economics Imperialism to Freakonomics
The Shifting Boundaries between Economics and other Social Sciences
Ben Fine author Dimitris Milonakis author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Published:15th Apr '09
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This hardback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£54.99(9780415423236)
Is or has economics ever been the imperial social science? Could or should it ever be so? These are the central concerns of this book. It involves a critical reflection on the process of how economics became the way it is, in terms of a narrow and intolerant orthodoxy, that has, nonetheless, increasingly directed its attention to appropriating the subject matter of other social sciences through the process termed "economics imperialism". In other words, the book addresses the shifting boundaries between economics and the other social sciences as seen from the confines of the dismal science, with some reflection on the responses to the economic imperialists by other disciplines.
Significantly, an old economics imperialism is identified of the "as if market" style most closely associated with Gary Becker, the public choice theory of Buchanan and Tullock and cliometrics. But this has given way to a more "revolutionary" form of economics imperialism associated with the information-theoretic economics of Akerlof and Stiglitz, and the new institutional economics of Coase, Wiliamson and North. Embracing one "new" field after another, economics imperialism reaches its most extreme version in the form of "freakonomics", the economic theory of everything on the basis of the most shallow principles.
By way of contrast and as a guiding critical thread, a thorough review is offered of the appropriate principles underpinning political economy and its relationship to social science, and how these have been and continue to be deployed. The case is made for political economy with an interdisciplinary character, able to bridge the gap between economics and other social sciences, and draw upon and interrogate the nature of contemporary capitalism.
Winner of the Deutscher Memorial Prize for 2009
As economic events have rocked the foundations of efficient market theory and forced economists to look more critically at rational markets, Fine and Milonakis offer a timely analysis of the emergence of economic imperialism, "the extension of economic analysis to subject matter beyond its traditional borders". - CHOICE
ISBN: 9780415423243
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 560g
216 pages