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The Microfoundations Delusion: Metaphor and Dogma in the History of Macroeconomics
Author(s): J. E. King (Author)
- Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd
- Publication Date: 30 Sept. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 304 pages
- ISBN-10: 184980317X
- ISBN-13: 9781849803175
Book Description
He draws on both the philosophy of science and the history of economic thought to demonstrate the dangers of foundational metaphors and the defects of micro-reduction as a methodological principle. Strong criticism of the microfoundations dogma is documented in great detail, from some mainstream and many heterodox economists and also from economic methodologists, social theorists and evolutionary biologists. The author argues for the relative autonomy of macroeconomics as a distinct ‘special science’, cooperating with but most definitely not reducible to microeconomics.
The Microfoundations Delusion will prove a stimulating and thought-provoking read for scholars, students and researchers in the fields of economics, heterodox economics and history of economic thought.
Editorial Reviews
Review
–Michael Howard, University of Waterloo, Canada
‘A generation ago Dudley Dillard wrote a famous article on the ”barter illusion in classical and neoclassical economics”. Now John King has gone a step further and written about the microfoundations delusion. The illusion has been with us for a very long time, the delusion is of more recent vintage. Together they have blocked a basic understanding of macroeconomic and monetary phenomena at a time when they are most urgently needed. This is a book that had to be written, and we are fortunate that it is John King who has written it. Essential reading for our times.’
–John Smithin, York University, Canada
‘King’s book, apart from its rather contentious conclusion that there is no inherent hierarchy between micro and macro, covers, every issue relevant to the debate majestically and in great detail. It is this reviewer s sense that, should the profession choose to engage with this book in a substantial and sustained way, these methodological questions which have lurked underneath the surface of economic discourse since at least Keynes s time can finally and once and for all be resolved.’
–Philip Pilkington, Review of Keynesian Economics
