Essays on: The Nature and State of Modern Economics

Tony Lawson is Professorial Research Fellow of the Independent Social Research Foundation and Reader in Economics at Cambridge University, UK.

This is a book of genuine originality, something that is rare in modern academia and all too often confused with mere novelty. Few thinkers can legitimately claim to have had a significant impact on their chosen field. Fewer still can claim to have substantively changed the terms of debate of that field. Tony Lawson is one of those few. These essays are for anyone with an interest in the future of the discipline.Jamie Morgan, Reader in Economics, Leeds Beckett University; Co-editor Real World Economics ReviewTony Lawson has changed the conversation.Edward Fullbrook, Executive Director of the World Economics Association.Lawson writes with clarity and with an intellectual passion. A must read for any student of economics and political economy.Peter Boettke, Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University, USAThis book should be read by everyone concerned to remedy the deficiencies in economics exposed by the 2008 financial crisis. Through rigorous argument, Lawson shows that the answer is not more complex forms of mathematical modelling, but the adoption of… methods that recognize the open-ended, relational , and processual character of economies.Diane Elson, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, UKTony Lawson provides the "L-correction" to Friedman's "F-twist", by forcing economics to consider its ontology.Steve Keen, Professor and Head of Economics, History & Politics, Kingston University London, UK[...] should be required reading for all serious economists, regardless of their approach.G.C. Harcourt, Professorial Fellow, University of New South WalesTony Lawson is the enfant terrible of modern economic methodology. Whether you agree with him or not, he makes you think. This collection of papers is no exception. Highly recommended for all those with the slightest interest in the current state and nature of economic science.Dimitris Milonakis, Professor of Political Economy and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Crete, Greece.The book by Tony Lawson entitled Essays on the nature and state of modern economics comes at a particularly fitting time in the history of the economic academic discipline. After what has been regarded by many as one of its major setbacks—namely the failure to predict the 2008 global financial crisis—economics has been severely shaken, marginally challenged, but ultimately left untouched by the debates on its conditions that have sparked in the last few years. Therefore, Lawson's choice to assemble a number of previously published papers and a new one into this collection constitutes an important and welcome contribution to the methodology and philosophy of economics literature.Marco Sebastianelli, Institute for Advanced Study of Pavia

• 1. Some fallacies or myths of modern economics 2. Modern economics: the problem and a solution 3. The nature of heterodox economics 4. What is this ‘school’ called neoclassical economics? 5. The current economic crisis: its nature and the course of academic economce 6. Contemporary economics and the crisis 7. Mathematical modelling and ideology in the economics academy: competing explanations of the failings of the modern discipline 8. Tensions in modern economics: the case of equilibrium analysis 9. Soro’s theory of reflexivity a critical comment 10. Ontology, modern economics, and pluralism 11. The varying fortunes of the project of mathematising economics: an evolutionary explanation