B40 - Economic Methodology: GeneralNávrat zpět

Quo Vadis, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences? The so-called Nobel Prize in Economics is not one of the original Nobel Prizes according to the testament of A. B. Nobel. Although it has been the target of various critics since its inception in 1969, it has become the most prestigious economic award. The paper summarizes more than 50 years of the history of this award, including the focus of the laureates, and asks - sometimes provocative - questions about the perspectives of economic science in the 21^st century.

Consumer choice theory uses continuous utility function, representing the consumer preference relation, as a traditional matter of course. However, there are alternative ways of defining consumer's optimum and proving its existence even without introducing such function. Contrasting both approaches raises question about aspects and limitations of economic interpretation of the mathematical form used in the theory. This article investigates economic interpretation in microeconomics as a relation of mathematical model and economic concepts and, using the example of consumer choice theory, formulates a model of economic interpretation based on the properties of analogical thinking, as defined by contemporary psychological literature. Model provides a framework for identifying risks coupled with economic interpretation of mathematical objects, their properties and relations.

In recent years, economic approach to human behavior has been challenged by contributions of cognitive science under the name of behavioral economics. As a result, two methodological strands in economics discord with each other: objectivistic (naturalistic) approach refuses the role of motivations in human behavior, adopting methods of natural science; subjectivistic (interpretative) approach, on the other hand, takes the teleological structure of human action as its corner stone. It is argued that position of the latter (esp. rational choice theory) has been undermined because it builds upon primitive version of human teleological structure. The paper shows that phenomenology offers a promising solution. Phenomenology identifies typical, invariant structures of human action and social world, with various degrees of their anonymity. If economic approach is founded on those structures adequately, then both rational choice theory and bounded rationality theories become compatible, as they differ in their degrees of anonymity only; they both belong to the body of (subjectivistic) economic approach to human behavior.

The study analyzes Mises's approach to the question of apriorism in a broader methodological context. It shows that it is not inevitable to advocate the aprioristic character of economics (resp. science of human action), as Mises does, to maintain the subjectivist-individualist methodology and the effort to adequately grasp the general laws of human action from its perspective. The present redefinition of apriorism is developed on the basis of thoughts of Barry Smith and Alfred Schutz. It suggests abandoning the apodictic character of apriori (which is untenable) and move closer to a broadly defined empiricism. The methodological insights developed in the paper are finally used to contribute to the debate between the behavioral economists and the proponents of rational choice theory.

The author raises doubts about a sense of "catching up" and an idolatry of HDP's growth. His argumentation is based on the longitudinal international research of the link "economics-happiness" at the frontier between economics and psychology. The rationality of economic science "more is better" is bounded by environmental and relational externalities: it is just what a "theory of happiness" argues against a "joyless economy". The family-household is an old istitution esp. loosing in a competition with the market economy. The article stresses a role of "relational goods" explaining why more is sometimes less. The loss of happiness in market democracies (R.Lane) is the reason for a crisis of economic paradigm; it has a chance to be healed by a switch from the principle of imperial equivalence to a reciprocity (economy of communion). Implications for economic policies based on a "science of happiness" reverse the link "economics-happiness" making from HDP growth a by-product of our effort for happiness.