Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey is distinguished professor emerita of economics and history and professor emerita of English and communication, at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"A compact discussion of some crucial issues economists should be contemplating."

• Introduction The Argument in BriefPart I. Economics Is in Scientific TroubleChapter 1. An Antique, Unethical, and Badly Measured Behaviorism Doesn’t Yield Good Economic Science or Good PoliticsChapter 2. Economics Needs to Get Serious about Measuring the EconomyChapter 3. The Number of Unmeasured “Imperfections” Is Embarrassingly LongChapter 4. Historical Economics Can Measure Them, Showing Them to Be SmallChapter 5. The Worst of Orthodox Positivism Lacks Ethics and MeasurementPart II. Neoinstitutionalism Shares in the TroublesChapter 6. Even the Best of Neoinstitutionalism Lacks MeasurementChapter 7. And “Culture,” or Mistaken History, Will Not Repair ItChapter 8. That Is, Neoinstitutionalism, Like the Rest of Behavioral Positivism, Fails as History and as EconomicsChapter 9. As It Fails in Logic and in PhilosophyChapter 10. Neoinstitutionalism, in Short, Is Not a Scientific SuccessPart III. Humanomics Can Save the ScienceChapter 11. But It’s Been Hard for Positivists to Understand HumanomicsChapter 12. Yet We Can Get a HumanomicsChapter 13. And Although We Can’t Save Private Max UChapter 14. We Can Save an Ethical HumanomicsAcknowledgmentsNotesWorks CitedIndex