The Economic Approach to Social Questions

Bibliographic Data

ID9727055
AuthorsHarry G Johnson (corresponding author)
Year1968
Volume35
Issue137
Pages1
Publication date1968-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0427 • E-ISSN: 1468-0335
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2552159
OpenAlexW2615726575
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Once upon a time-long ago now-it was possible to refer anyone who thought that economic theory had something to say about society and its problems, and wanted to find out what was, to Marshall's classic Principles of Economics, wherein he could find structure of economic theory spelled out in literary terms intended to be comprehensible to businessman of average intelligence. (Even when I went up to Cambridge in 1945 myth still prevailed that it is all [mercifully] in Marshall.) That situation has been revolutionized as a result of introduction of geometrical and mathematical methods of theoretical investigation in 1930s, and post-war emphasis on empirical testing of hypotheses and measurement of economic relationships. Economic theory is now written in set theory, mathematical models and regression results, with consequence that seems to be too abstruse and remote from reality, as well as too technical, to be of any interest or use to non-specialist concerned with understanding and improving world in which he lives. This impression, unfortunately, is all too often shared by professional economists themselves, who frequently confine use of their scientific tools to technical and academic problems, while relying on intuition, emotion, or political ideology to form their attitudes on social questions. Yet economics is essentially a social science, concerned to further understanding of society by application of scientific methods of analysis and research to economic aspects of society's activities, and great advance of science that has occurred in past thirty-odd years has made more and not less capable of illuminating social questions. This, at least, is what I hope to demonstrate-necessarily in very broad and sketchy terms-in this lecture. Economists have, of course, always expressed themselves freely on social questions, though their views have rarely been popular among rest of educated elite. It was, indeed, insistence of classical economists and their followers on inevitability of consequences of Malthus' (fallacious), theory of population growth that earned discipline in nineteenth century description of the dismal science: while their general endorsement of laissez-faire. though

Economics · Neoclassical economics · Positive economics · Sociology · Economic Theory and Institutions