--- Fred Foldvary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "I think it is better to use other symbols, such as *caps*, since when they get copied, one may want to revert to u/l."
Sorry. Yahoo email doesn't give me many options. I was hesitant about yelling, which I guess is what all caps is. I'll try something else in the future. Thanks. "Most of textbook microeconomics is a priori. For example, when deriving the law of demand, do they justify this with data?" By that reasoning, aren't all the results obtained in Euclid's Elements assumed a priori? I took the law of demand, along with most textbook economics, to be derived axiomatically rather than assumed. Or is that what a priori means? Given reasonable assumptions (axioms), does that mean that economic findings are valid without being 'scientific,' i.e. rigoriously tested? It seems to me yes, but when data doesn't match theory, one must search for new or modified axioms. Thoughts on that? By the way, I was particularly interested in Bunge's assertions that a scientific research program is to find the functional forms between variables. Should economists spend more time on that program? It seems like it would be unnecessary in many contexts, e.g. the Tragedy of the Commons where a result can obtain by merely knowing that the production function is concave, inter alia. But then again, maybe not. It seems that alot of people critique econ. without learning it, and Bunge seems to be in that school of thought. But it is good to take critiques seriously. I bet there are a lot of psychic mediums and polygraph artists who actually believe what they're doing it valid and real. It's probably best to double check once in a while and make sure we're not headed down that road. I still maintain that Bunge's ridiculous assertion that economics assumes greed/money as the only human motivator is held by most people. I think it could be addressed by including the definition of rationality as the structure of preferences rather than the content of preferences in basic economics education. I think educators are doing a great disservice by not making this clear early on. -jsh __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
