Why do economists disagree?

POURQUOI LES ECONOMISTES NE SONT-ILS PAS D'ACCORD ENTRE EUX ?

Albert Marouani (1)

1 GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion

The question of disagreements between economists does not concern here the evolutions of the economic thought which translate the progression of a scientific discipline through the deepening of the concepts, their measurement, the tools of analysis (mathematical and econometric models), the constructions more or less elaborate and sophisticated theoretical which will be studied by historians and epistemologists of economic thought. This is neither the principle of refutability of K. Popper, nor in the sense of Lakatos, that of the paradigmatic evolutions or breaks that are mentioned here, even if the border is often tenuous between scientific disagreements and ideological disagreements. The economy, and in particular the political economy, oscillates constantly between an exact scientific status, especially when it studies the behavior (microeconomics), and a more vague status of the social discipline related to "art", to philosophy, politics, history ... The economist himself feels personally and sociologically "engaged" and involved in his analyzes and forecasts of macroeconomic phenomena in particular. The disagreements between the economists referred to here concern, over a given period, one or more current economic issues recognized as such by all economists.

Mots clés: Théorie économique historicisée; Pensée économique contemporaine; Méthodologie analytique; Comportements collectifs et individuels; économie comportementale; Cognitivisme

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences

Albert Marouani. POURQUOI LES ECONOMISTES NE SONT-ILS PAS D'ACCORD ENTRE EUX ?. Conférences du Cercle Condorcet Nice, Jan 2019, Nice, France. ⟨halshs-02021218⟩