Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics

A penetrating analysis from one of the defining voices of contemporary economics. In Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics, Deirdre Nansen McCloskey zeroes in on the authoritarian cast of recent economics, arguing for a re-focusing on the liberated human. The behaviorist positivism fashionable in the field since the 1930s treats people from the outside. It yielded in Williamson and North a manipulative neo-institutionalism. McCloskey argues that institutions as causes are mainly temporary and intermediate, not ultimate. They are human-made, depending on words, myth, ethics, ideology, history, identity, professionalism, gossip, movies, what your mother taught you.  Humans create conversations as they go, in the economy as in the rest of life. In engaging and erudite prose, McCloskey exhibits in detail the scientific failures of neo-institutionalism. She proposes a “humanomics,” an economics with the humans left in.  Humanomics keeps theory, quantification, experiment, mathematics, econometrics, though insisting on more true rigor than is usual. It adds what can be learned about the economy from history, philosophy, literature, and all the sciences of humans. McCloskey reaffirms the durability of “market-tested innovation” against the imagined imperfections to be corrected by a perfect government. With her trademark zeal and incisive wit, she rebuilds the foundations of economics.

Table of Contents:
Introduction The Argument in Brief Part I. Economics Is in Scientific Trouble Chapter 1. An Antique, Unethical, and Badly Measured Behaviorism Doesn’t Yield Good Economic Science or Good Politics Chapter 2. Economics Needs to Get Serious about Measuring the Economy Chapter 3. The Number of Unmeasured “Imperfections” Is Embarrassingly Long Chapter 4. Historical Economics Can Measure Them, Showing Them to Be Small Chapter 5. The Worst of Orthodox Positivism Lacks Ethics and Measurement Part II. Neoinstitutionalism Shares in the Troubles Chapter 6. Even the Best of Neoinstitutionalism Lacks Measurement Chapter 7. And “Culture,” or Mistaken History, Will Not Repair It Chapter 8. That Is, Neoinstitutionalism, Like the Rest of Behavioral Positivism, Fails as History and as Economics Chapter 9. As It Fails in Logic and in Philosophy Chapter 10. Neoinstitutionalism, in Short, Is Not a Scientific Success Part III. Humanomics Can Save the Science Chapter 11. But It’s Been Hard for Positivists to Understand Humanomics Chapter 12. Yet We Can Get a Humanomics Chapter 13. And Although We Can’t Save Private Max U Chapter 14. We Can Save an Ethical Humanomics Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index