Economics in the Big Wide World

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Abstract John Dupré notoriously questions ‘Could there be a science of economics?’ He tells us his skepticism is directed especially to the mathematical constructs in economics, adding that ‘…there may well be much useful, if generally loose, causal knowledge to be had in economics….’ This paper agrees with Dupré on just that. The exact conclusions that economics is so proud of hold only in what I describe as ‘small worlds’: settings where the only causes of the phenomenon of interest are ones that economics knows how to model. But most real-world settings aren’t like that. Following Dupré’s lead on ‘loose knowledge’, I argue that, in order to help with the large world outside its borders, economics should export the rigorously-established principles of which she is so proud as qualitative, inexact tendency principles .

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