Robert Boyer, Une discipline sans réflexivité peut-elle être une science? Epistémologie de l’économie

Toshio Yamada ()
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Toshio Yamada: Nagoya University

Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, 2023, vol. 20, issue 1, No 8, 169-179

Abstract: Abstract This book critically examines the transformation and degeneration of mainstream macroeconomics in recent years, both in terms of economics itself and the state of the economists’ profession, and calls on economists to engage in dialogue with each other. Although macroeconomics has made great strides since its foundation by Keynes, the author analyzes its recent degradation from the viewpoint of both the historical transformation of economic structure and the various factors at work in the discipline of economics. The book's distinctive feature is that it develops the inherent criticism of mainstream macroeconomics absorbed in microeconomics not only in terms of its theoretical content but also in terms of the nature of the professional group of economists, using the term "reflexivity" as a keyword. The negative nature of the professional group means the lack of reflexivity on the anomie of the division of labor in economics, the divisions among professional groups, the scorekeeping and mimeticism in economists’ training organizations, the allegiance to the paradigm of the organization to which one belongs rather than the pursuit of scientific truth. As a result, the new classical macroeconomics has lost the relevance of its theory with observations, leading to an incapacity to predict and explain the 2008 crisis, for example. Instead, the author insists that we should first focus on creating concepts and methods for analyzing the socioeconomic regimes that exist in a specific time and space, rather than on general laws that are transhistorical or universally valid for capitalism. As the author says, theories are the daughter of history, not rationality or general equilibrium. We must elaborate macroeconomics based on historical and institutional foundations. Thus, each member of the economics profession is called upon to form and participate in a common forum or agora where different approaches can be confronted, debated, and, if possible, synthesized. Through this unique analysis, the book ultimately leads us to the question of what economics should elucidate and what it should contribute to.

Keywords: Reflexivity in economics; Degeneration of mainstream macroeconomics; Professional group of economists; Historical and institutional macroeconomics; Economics of economizing vs. economics of livelihood (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 B2 B4 B5 E0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/s40844-023-00249-9

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