Adolph Lowe's Methodological Alternative for Economic Research and Policy

Will Lissner

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1981, vol. 40, issue 3, 277-286

Abstract: Abstract. Social scientists and philosophers are engaged in a profound re‐examination of the foundations of economic science. Among them the economist, Adolph Lowe, opened a new vista. First, in his Economics and Sociology: A Plea for Cooperation in the Social Sciences (1935) he argued compellingly for a unified social science. Lowe introduced there the concept of “instrumental analysis” which he greatly modified in On Economic Knowledge (1965) and applied to a major issue of contemporary economics in The Path of Economic Growth (1976). Instrumental analysis is intended to achieve a system of “political economics,” a theory for deriving one or more paths—a sequence of positions—over which an initial state of an economy can be transformed into a terminal state—a goal itself stipulated by political decision. Instrumental analysis is also used to determine measures of public control to achieve the behavioral pattern suitable to set and keep the system on the goal‐adequate trajectory.

Date: 1981
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