N00 - Economic History: GeneralNávrat zpět

What are the contributions of historical example to understanding of economic phenomena? Economists widely adopt methods of natural sciences. But economics is a social science and the observed economic phenomena are qualitatively different from phenomena observed by natural sciences. Thus the use of natural sciences methods makes implications of economic theoretical models unrealistic. In this paper, I argue that the evidence of historical example is a good method to illuminate the implications of economic theoretical models, because if implications of economic theoretical models are illustrated in historical perspective, they can be more easily verified by common sense thus particular historical circumstances may be partly revealed. Moreover, historical examples also serve to demonstrate the qualitative content of casual economic relations based on human historical experience, which is ignored by natural science methods. The historical example is thus not only more realistic but it better corresponds with the social nature of economic science.

The article gives an account of a recent attempt to rebuild economics along the lines of increasing returns. The current orthodoxy is criticised for overemphasizing the role of decreasing returns. For the sake of analytical rigor economists sacrifice a correct picture of the modern world, say the critics. Small events are magnified by the positive feedback. The system is thus set on a path and cannot shake off its history. Path dependent processes are illustrated by the persistence of the QWERTY keyboard. As the world is stuck with this inferior standard, government action is needed to adopt a better alternative. However, the second part of the article offers a successful refutation of the QWERTY story. This particular example of path dependency evolved into an ambitious interdisciplinary project whose aim is to introduce new, visionary approaches into the scientific thinking. The prospects of chaos theory in economics are therefore briefly outlined.