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Methodology: A Comment on Frazer and Boland, II

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Date
1984
Author
Hoover, Kevin Douglas
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Abstract
In a recent issue of "The American Economic Review (1983), William Frazer and Lawrence Boland present Milton Friedman's methodology as instrumentalism. The purpose of article is not to question Frazer and Boland's interpretation of Friedman; rather it is to question their accompanying assertion that instrumentalism is a sound methodology for short-run, practical policy purposes. According to Frazer and Boland, Friedman's essay calls "attention to the great relevance of positive economics for normative economics. The question was which policy should be selected. The promise of instrumentalism to Frazer and Boland is that it provides an effective method for answering this question. It does so by dissolving or ignoring the problem of induction and is as a method free from logical errors. Boland uses conventionalist criteria (for Friedman simplicity and fruitfulness) to select a theory to use for a particular occasion. This theory is free from logical error. It is alogical; the first two steps ensure that logic is barely relevant to it.
Type
Journal article
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/1724
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1805148
Citation
Hoover, Dr Kevin. Methodology: A Comment on Frazer and Boland, II. The American Economic Review. 74. 4 (September 1984). 789-792. Print.
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Scholars@Duke

Hoover

Kevin Douglas Hoover

Professor of Economics
Professor Hoover's research interests include macroeconomics, monetary economics, the history of economics, and the philosophy and methodology of empirical economics. His recent work in economics has focused on the application of causal search methodologies for structural vector autoregression, the history of microfoundational programs in macroeconomics, and Roy Harrod's early work on dynamic macroeconomics. In philosophy, he has concentrated on issues related to causality, especially in economi
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