-
33The many faces of rational choice theoryErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 6 (2): 117. 2013.
-
33Five reasons for the use of network analysis in the history of economicsJournal of Economic Methodology 25 (4): 311-328. 2018.Network analysis is increasingly appreciated as a methodology in the social sciences. In recent years, it is also receiving attention among historians of science. History of economics is no exception in that researchers have begun to use network analysis to study a variety of topics, including collaborations and interactions in scientific communities, the spread of economic theories within and across fields, or the formation of new specialties in the discipline of economics. Against this backdro…Read more
-
931Imagination Rather Than Observation in Econometrics: Ragnar Frisch’s Hypothetical Experiments as Thought ExperimentsHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 9 (1): 35-74. 2019.In economics, thought experiments are frequently justified by the difficulty of conducting controlled experiments. They serve several functions, such as establishing causal facts, isolating tendencies, and allowing inferences from models to reality. In this paper, I argue that thought experiments served a further function in economics: facilitating the quantitative definition and measurement of the theoretical concept of utility, thereby bridging the gap between theory and statistical data. I su…Read more
-
52From theories of human behavior to rules of rational choiceHistory of Political Economy 50 (1): 1-48. 2018.This article traces a normative turn between the middle of the 1940s and the early 1950s reflected in the reformulation, interpretation, and use of rational choice theories at the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics. This turn is paralleled by a transition from Jacob Marschak’s to Tjalling Koopmans’s research program. While rational choice theories initially raised high hopes that they would serve as empirical accounts to inform testable hypotheses about economic regularities, they becam…Read more
-
17Book Review: Defending the History of Economic Thought. By Steven Kates. Cheltenham, U.K. and Northampton, Mass.: Elgar, 2013. Pp. x, 140. $99.95. ISBN 978–1–84844–820–9 (review)Journal of Economic Literature 52 (4): 1160-1196. 2014.
-
48Using Rational Choice Theory to account for moral agency has always had some uncomfortable aspect to it. Economists’ attempts to include the moral dimension of behaviour either as a preference for moral behaviour or as an external constraint on self-interested choice, have been criticized for relying on tautologies or lacking a realistic picture of motivation. Homo Oeconomicus, even when conceptually enriched by all kinds of motivations, is ultimately still characterized as caring only for what …Read more
-
33Book Review: How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind. The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality, Paul Erickson, Judy Klein, Lorraine Daston, Rebecca Lemov, Thomas Sturm, Michael D. Gordin. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London (2013). 272 pp (review)Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics 56 88-90. 2015.
-
40Review: Marcel Boumans: Science outside the Laboratory (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. forthcoming.
-
48Rational choice as a toolbox for the economist: an interview with Itzhak GilboaErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 7 (2): 116-141. 2014.
-
74Book Review: Epstein Brian The Ant Trap : Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 298 pp. $36.04. ISBN 978-0-19-938110-4 (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 48 (1): 105-128. 2018.
-
29Between mathematical formalism, normative choice rules, and the behavioural sciences : The emergence of rational choice theories in the late 1940s and early 1950sEuropean Journal of the History of Economic Thought 24 (6): 1277-1317. 2017.This paper discusses why mathematical economists of the early Cold War period favored formal-axiomatic over behavioral choice theories. One reason was that formal-axiomatic theories allowed mathematical economists to improve the conceptual and theoretical foundations of economics and thereby to increase its scientific status. Furthermore, the separation between mathematical economics and other behavioral sciences was not as clear-cut as often argued. While economists did not modify their behavio…Read more
-
82The diffusion of scientific innovations: A role typologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 77 64-80. 2019.How do scientific innovations spread within and across scientific communities? In this paper, we propose a general account of the diffusion of scientific innovations. This account acknowledges that novel ideas must be elaborated on and conceptually translated before they can be adopted and applied to field-specific problems. We motivate our account by examining an exemplary case of knowledge diffusion, namely, the early spread of theories of rational decision-making. These theories were grounded…Read more
-
96Book Review: Zahle, Julie, Collin, FinnRethinking the Individualism-Holism Debate, Berlin: Springer, 2014. 255 pp. $129 . ISBN: 978-3-319-05342-1 (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 48 (2): 247-261. 2018.Rethinking the Individualism-Holism Debate edited by Julie Zahle and Finn Collin is reviewed. Each of the contributions contained in the volume is summarized. The review concludes by assessing the volume’s usefulness for bringing clarity into the debate in the light of the editors’ self-set goal of rethinking the individualism-holism debate as one of the more important yet confused debates in philosophy of the social sciences.
-
62The Motive of Commitment and Its Implications for Rational Choice TheoryAnalyse & Kritik 31 (2): 291-317. 2009.This paper addresses the explanatory role of the concept of a motive for action in economics. The aim of the paper is to show the difficulty economists have to accommodate the motive of commitment into their explanatory and predictive framework, i.e. rational choice theory. One difficulty is that the economists’ explanation becomes analytic when assuming preferences of commitment. Another difficulty is that it is highly doubtful whether commitment can be represented by current frameworks while (…Read more
-
68The potentials and limitations of rational choice theory: an interview with Gary BeckerErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 5 (1): 73. 2012.
-
45The world in axioms: an interview with Patrick SuppesJournal of Economic Methodology 23 (3): 333-346. 2016.
-
-
-
Ludwig-Maximilians-University MunichMunich Center For Mathematical PhilosophyResearcher
-
George Mason UniversityPolitics, and Economics At The Mercatus CenterResearch Affiliate (Part-time)
-
Ludwig Maximilians Universität, MünchenMunich Centre for Mathematical PhilosophyExternal Member (Part-time)
Witten/Herdecke University
Alumnus, 2013
Hannover, NDS, Germany
Areas of Specialization
1 more
Philosophy of Economics |
History of Economics |
Methodology of Economics |
Philosophy of Social Science |
Sociology of Science |
Philosophy of Sociology |