The Phenomenology of Economics: Life-World, Formalism, and the Invisible Hand

I use the phenomenological notion of the life-world for a thorough critique of economic science on three different levels. First, for a description of the discursive situation of current economists regarding their public, professional and pedagogical ethos. Second, for a social history of the scientification of economics from the 17th century until today. Third, for a biography of a mathematical economist, Gerard Debreu, who never perceived himself as an economist but nevertheless received the Nobel Prize for Economics. I argue that economic science is constituted by the oblivion of the life-world, specifically the oblivion of the motives that give rise to economics. Claiming scientific authority in economics thus produces an experiential conflict for the intellectual life of economists

Minimum-weight triangulation is NP-hard

A triangulation of a planar point set S is a maximal plane straight-line graph with vertex set S. In the minimum-weight triangulation (MWT) problem, we are looking for a triangulation of a given point set that minimizes the sum of the edge lengths. We prove that the decision version of this problem is NP-hard. We use a reduction from PLANAR-1-IN-3-SAT. The correct working of the gadgets is established with computer assistance, using dynamic programming on polygonal faces, as well as the beta-skeleton heuristic to certify that certain edges belong to the minimum-weight triangulation.Comment: 45 pages (including a technical appendix of 13 pages), 28 figures. This revision contains a few improvements in the expositio

Economic Knowledge in Socialism, 1945–89: Editors’ Introduction

Contains fulltext : 215421.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access

Programming the USSR: Leonid V. Kantorovich in context

Contains fulltext : 217551pub.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)08 april 202024 p