The Principles of Economics

Julia Köhn

Chapter Chapter 4 in Uncertainty in Economics, 2017, pp 49-62 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Drawing back on John Neville Keynes’ distinction between positive or regulative (normative) science, Milton Friedman (1953), had developed the methodology of positive economics, which still today dominates economic research all over the globe. Then, the question was, whether economics is a science or rather political economy, which was interpreted as an art. If economics were a science, it had to bring about a systematized knowledge about the economy, according to Friedman’s view. Whereas, if economics were an art it would be concerned with identifying rules for attaining some given end. Friedman ended the dispute and established the view that economics is a positive science, which consisted of “a body of tentatively accepted generalizations about economic phenomena that can be used to predict the consequences of changes in circumstances” (Friedman 1953: 25).

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:conchp:978-3-319-55351-1_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319553511

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-55351-1_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Contributions to Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().