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FRIEDMAN'S METHODOLOGY OF POSITIVE ECONOMICS: A SOFT READING
Author(s) -
MAYER THOMAS
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1111/j.1465-7295.1993.tb00878.x
Subject(s) - plea , instrumentalism , reading (process) , economics , positive economics , context (archaeology) , positivism , heuristic , neoclassical economics , epistemology , philosophy , law , political science , paleontology , biology
In his “Methodology of Positive Economics” Friedman aimed to provide a useful heuristic for working economists and not a sophisticated philosophical analysis. Hence, one should be cautious about reading specific philosophical positions, such as instrumentalism, into it. In the context of its time, it was a plea for a positivistic interplay of theory and observation. On such a reading Friedman's plea for unrealistic assumptions becomes much more defensible, and Friedman's essay is broadly consistent with the methodology that most economists now affirm, at least in principle.