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The rhetoric of failure: a hyper-dialog about method in economics and how to get things going

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  • Kakarot-Handtke, Egmont

Abstract

All are agreed that orthodox economics is unsatisfactory but there is wide disagreement, especially among heterodox critics, whether the problems lie at the level of substantive theory or at the level of methodology. This paper gives first an overview of the methodological questions at issue. The frame of reference includes J. S. Mill, Jevons, Popper, Keynes, and Lawson. Drawing on the conclusions, the domain of economics is subsequently refocused. Human behavior is moved from the center to the periphery. From elementary systemic properties the relation of income and profit is then consistently derived. This solves the profit conundrum.

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  • Kakarot-Handtke, Egmont, 2012. "The rhetoric of failure: a hyper-dialog about method in economics and how to get things going," MPRA Paper 43276, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:43276
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    Cited by:

    1. Kakarot-Handtke, Egmont, 2012. "Geometrical exposition of structural axiomatic economics (I): Fundamentals," MPRA Paper 43269, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Kakarot-Handtke, Egmont, 2012. "Keynes’s employment function and the gratuitous Phillips curve disaster," MPRA Paper 43111, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Kakarot-Handtke, Egmont, 2012. "General formal foundations of the virtuous deficit–profit symmetry and the vicious debt deflation," MPRA Paper 42912, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Kakarot-Handtke, Egmont, 2011. "Trade, productivity, income, and profit: the comparative advantage of structural axiomatic analysis," MPRA Paper 43872, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 18 Jan 2012.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    new framework of concepts; structure-centric; axiom set; income; profit; Mill’s Impossibility Proposition; Physicist’s Nonentity Proposition; Cournot’s Unfitness Proposition; Hudík’s Independence Proposition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B10 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - General
    • B30 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought: Individuals - - - General
    • B20 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - General
    • E10 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - General

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