Representation and Structure in Economics. The Methodology of Econometric Models of the Consumption Function, Hsiang-Ke Chao

摘要

In the last decades, concepts such as 'representation' or 'structure' have been widely debated by philosophers of science, notably in the quarrels between scientific realists and antirealists. Chao's book Representation and Structure in Economics adds to this literature. His contribution at once fits well into the philosophy of economics and into general philosophy of science. This is because Chao specifically deals with the methodology of econometric models, and within this context he raises epistemological questions that have been debated in other fields such as the natural sciences. This work is therefore an interesting and valuable attempt to bridge the scientific literature in economics and econometrics with the philosophical literature on scientific realism, which, as a matter of fact, dealt mainly with physics and the natural sciences, rather than the special sciences.