Daniel Hausman

The risks to groups posed by research involving human beings—including genetics research—should be conceived of as a species of third-party risks. The important task of protecting third parties from the risks posed by the conduct and the findings of research should not be assigned to IRBs because they are not designed or equipped to handle such a broad responsibility. The serious problems raised by third-party risks require an integration of policy-making and regulation that is beyond the scope and competence of IRBs

The truth about health care policy lies between two exaggerated views: a market view in which individuals purchase their own health care from profit maximizing health-care firms and a control view in which costs are controlled by regulations limiting which treatments health insurance will pay for. This essay suggests a way to avoid on the one hand the suffering, unfairness, and abandonment of solidarity entailed by the market view and, on the other hand, to diminish the inflexibility and inefficiency of the control view. It suggests that the way to mitigate these problems is to recognize the malleability of motivation and the range of factors, in addition to financial incentives, that may influence the behavior of patients and especially physicians.

Constructive empiricism, Bas van fraassen's new variety of anti-Realism, Maintains that science aims at empirically adequate, Rather than true theories and that, In fully accepting a theory, One should believe only that it is empirically adequate. A theory is empirically adequate just in case it has a model in which all observable phenomena may be embedded. I challenge van fraassen's main arguments and argue that the observable/unobservable distinction will not bear the weight that van fraassen places on it

An anthology of works on the philosophy of economics, including classic texts and essays exploring specific branches and schools of economics. Completely revamped, this edition contains new selections, a revised introduction and a bibliography. The volume contains 26 chapters organized into five parts: Classic Discussions, Positivist and Popperian Views, Ideology and Normative Economics, Branches and Schools of Economics and Their Methodological Problems and New Directions in Economic Methodology. It includes crucial historical contributions by figures such as Mill, Marx, Weber, Robbins, Knight, and Veblen and works by most of the leading contemporary figures writing on economic methodology, including five Nobel Laureates in Economics.

Erratum to: Synthese 191:1925–1930 DOI:10.1007/s11229-013-0380-3 The authors were unaware that points in their article appeared in “Caveats for Causal Reasoning with Equilibrium Models,” by Denver Dash and Marek Druzdzel, published in S. Benferhat and P. Besnard : European Conferences on Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty 2001, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 2143, pp. 192–203. The authors were unaware of this essay and would like to apologize to the authors for failing to cite their excellent work

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the structure, strategy and methods of assessment of orthodox theoretical economics. In Part I Professor Hausman explains how economists theorise, emphasising the essential underlying commitment of economists to a vision of economics as a separate science. In Part II he defends the view that the basic axioms of economics are 'inexact' since they deal only with the 'major' causes; unlike most writers on economic methodology, the author argues that it is the rules that economists espouse rather than their practice that is at fault. Part III links the conception of economics as a separate science to the fact that economic theories offer reasons and justifications for human actions, not just their causes. With its lengthy appendix introducing relevant issues in philosophy of science, this book is a major addition to philosophy of economics and of social science.

This essay examines the critique of behavioral economics that Infante, Lecouteaux and Sugden offer in:"Preference Purification and the Inner Rational Agent.” It identifies and questions three main criticisms that ILS make: a methodological criticism, alleging that there is no psychological basis for the attribution of purified preferences, an epistemological criticism, alleging that there is little evidence for claims about purified preferences, and a normative criticism, arguing that policies should aim to facilitate people’s choices rather than to satisfy purified preferences. The essay also distinguishes the view of welfare economics defended in Preference, Value, Choice, and Welfare from the claims of behavioral economists ILS criticize

This book is about preferences, principally as they figure in economics. It also explores their uses in everyday language and action, how they are understood in psychology and how they figure in philosophical reflection on action and morality. The book clarifies and for the most part defends the way in which economists invoke preferences to explain, predict and assess behavior and outcomes. Hausman argues, however, that the predictions and explanations economists offer rely on theories of preference formation that are in need of further development, and he criticizes attempts to define welfare in terms of preferences and to define preferences in terms of choices or self-interest. The analysis clarifies the relations between rational choice theory and philosophical accounts of human action. The book also assembles the materials out of which models of preference formation and modification can be constructed, and it comments on how reason and emotion shape preferences.