Cowles Changes Allegiance: From Empiricism to Cognition as Intuitive Statistics

Does neoclassical economic theory embody a specific politics? A century of uneasy bromides have done little to seriously clarify the issue, perhaps because of a tendency to confuse the various levels of specificity at which an answer might be tendered and defended. At its most abstract and general, the response must surely be: a few equations imperfectly cribbed from rational mechanics need have no special affinity with any political position whatsoever, as long as sufficient ingenuity is expended in their interpretation and elaboration. Yet, at a slightly less elevated level, the question as to whether individual neoclassical economists put forth arguments that supported various political programs cannot be answered in any other manner but the airmative. Walras thought it underwrote a limited conception of state ownership of land; Pareto thought it resonated with a sour cynicism about the circulation of elites; Hayek began by thinking it helped explain an anti-statist position; Milton Friedman believed it the economics of Dr. Pangloss. But this raises the further question: Is there anything intrinsic to the doctrine that biases it toward one political orientation or another? This question can only be addressed at the very specific level of individual cultural formations at well-demarcated historical junctures.