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Causal Explanations in Economics

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Economics Without Laws

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Abstract

The chapter shows how economists explain by citing causes of economic phenomena. It starts by scrutinizing various philosophical theories of causation and then puts focus on Nancy Cartwright’s insights concerning the nature of causal processes. Hardt thus subscribes to Cartwright’s claim that knowledge is not knowledge of laws but knowledge of the nature of things. ‘Causal explanations in economics’ also offers further arguments for treating models as producers of laws that are only true in models. Hardt finishes this chapter by asking whether analysing date alone can give us information about causation. He claims that the dream of econometrics of finding causal relations by referring to data only is still far from coming true.

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  1. Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

    Łukasz Hardt

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  1. Łukasz Hardt
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Hardt, Ł. (2017). Causal Explanations in Economics. In: Economics Without Laws. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54861-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54861-6_4

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-54860-9

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