The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

Living Edition
| Editors: Palgrave Macmillan

Paradoxes and Anomalies

  • N. De Marchi
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_1885-1
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Abstract

Paradox originally meant contrary to accepted opinion. In logic something more precise is usually intended. A paradox is involved, for example, if we are led to a contradiction by sound reasoning. Economists on the whole seem to have stayed closer to the original sense. We can use this fact to claim that there is ground for treating economists’ paradoxes simply as puzzling outcomes. There have been rhetorical appeals to ‘paradox’, as we shall see; but there are also numerous examples of substantive puzzles. They are to be expected as the limits to existing ways of explaining are explored. This usage has the advantage therefore of allowing us to treat paradoxes as a normal aspect of ongoing inquiry, and it shifts the focus of interest in them away from a status as intellectual curiosities to a status as stimulant to further research.

Keywords

Interest Rate Hard Core Certainty Equivalent Puzzling Outcome Allais Paradox 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 1987

Authors and Affiliations

  • N. De Marchi
    • 1
  1. 1.