Economic methodology

Economic methodology is the study of methods, especially the scientific method, in relation to economics, including principles underlying economic reasoning.^[1] In contemporary English, 'methodology' may reference theoretical or systematic aspects of a method (or several methods). Philosophy and economics also takes up methodology at the intersection of the two subjects.

Scope

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General

• the definition of economics^[2]
• the scope of economics as defined by its methods^[3]
• fundamental principles and operational significance of economic theory^[4]
• methodological individualism versus holism in economics^[5]
• the role of simplifying assumptions such as
  rational choice and profit maximizing in explaining or predicting phenomena^[6]
• descriptive/positive, prescriptive/normative, and applied^[7] uses of theory^[8]
• the scientific status
  expanding domain of economics^[10]
• issues critical to the practice and progress of econometrics^[11]
• the balance of
  empirical and philosophical approaches^[12]
• the role of experiments in economics^[13]
• the role of mathematics and mathematical economics in economics^[14]
• the writing^[15] and rhetoric of economics^[16]
• the relation between theory, observation, application, and methodology in contemporary economics.^[17]

Economic methodology has gone from periodic reflections of economists on method to a distinct research field in economics since the 1970s. In one direction, it has expanded to the

• Economic systems
• Methodology of econometrics
• Model (economics)

Notes