Causality and Determinism in Economics

Stavros Drakopoulos () and Thomas S Torrance

Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 1994, vol. 41, issue 2, pages 176-93

Abstract: A great deal of recent methodological discussion in economics and econometrics has been dominated by the question of the appropriate role of the concepts of causality and determinism. This paper traces the evolution of these two notions in recent economics literature, and seeks to appraise the current range of professional opinion. Positively, the paper argues that since developments in twentieth-century microphysics have largely discredited the old deterministic paradigm within the physical sciences, the persistence of this paradigm in the social sciences must be viewed as scientifically untenable. Within economics, causality should be understood in the context of open systems and of inherently probabilistic explanations. Copyright 1994 by Scottish Economic Society.

Date: 1994

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Scottish Journal of Political Economy is edited by Robert A. Hart, Andrew Hughes-Hallett and Campbell Leith

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