Economics and Reality (Economics As Social Theory)

Author: Tony Lawson
List Price: $29.99
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ISBN: 0415154219
Publisher: Routledge (May, 1997)
Sales Rank: 285,972
Average Customer Rating: 4 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 5 out of 5
graduates and faculty in agricultural economics should read
For me the book is very good. I do not take it as a show-off of erudition but as a thorough explanation of why recognition of subject and context matter if we are to address problems more meaningfully. The authors goes into indicating a 'broad criteria and strategy', as giving a recipe is not consistent with critical realism, the philosophy of social science proposed as appropriate to move on to leaving a traditional lack of sense in much economic research.


Rating: 3 out of 5
A nice work that doesn't communicate
Those readers that are suspicious of the methodological foundations of modern economics will definitely find a lot of interesting material in Lawson's book. There is no doubt that Lawson's work (which is a product of more than 10 years of research at Cambridge) is deep and raises fundamental questions. One big problem, however, is that the book assumes that the reader has a substantial amount of knowledge about philosophy of science and this is surely not the case as far as the "representative" economist is concerned. Too bad. Lawson's message deserves to be made available to a larger audience. This would only be accomplished, however, if Lawson had chosen to cut the amount of philosophical blah-blah-blah and give more direct to the point examples of what he has in mind. He preferred to demonstrate his erudition, though.

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