Learning from the debate on externalities

Texte issu d'une conférence qui s'est tenue les 17 et 19 juin 1996 à L'Université de Bergame, Italie

Popper and the rationality principle

Though Karl Popper's short paper on the rationality principle may not be the most frequently discussed of all of his writings on epistemological matters, it is very probably the most radically criticized. The fact that this champion of falsifiability suggested in this text not to reject a principle that he emphatically declares false has always been a source of embarrassment for his disciples and has often been characterised by his adversaries as a rather shameful theoretical development. In the present paper, I would like to show that, in spite of this fact, Popper's views on rationality, while at moments somewhat awkwardly formulated, are much more sensible than it is usually acknowledged and that they might even be considered as one of his most interesting contributions, and surely as his most underestimated one

Information costs, deliberation costs and transaction costs a parallel treatment

Cette version est une version de travail

Was Keynes a Liberal and an Individualist? Or Keynes reader of Mandeville

Dans le but d'éclairer la question de savoir jusqu'à quel point Keynes devrait être considéré tant comme un libéral que comme un individualiste, le texte examine la façon dont Keynes a compris Mandeville qui, adoptait lui-même, à ce double égard, des positions plutôt ambiguës. La lecture que fait Keynes de la Fable des Abeilles est comparée à celles de N. Rosenberg, de F. Hayek et de L. Dumont. De cette comparaison, se dégage la conclusion que les positions respectives de Keynes et de Mandeville sont beaucoup plus apparentées qu'on le suppose généralement. De plus, ce rapprochement nous invite à redéfinir des concepts comme "individualisme", "holisme", "libéralisme" et "interventionnisme" qui manifestement ne peuvent s'appliquer aisément ni à l'un ni à l'autre de ces auteurs.Whether and to what extent Keynes should be considered both a liberal and an individualist is a rather complex question, and one which this paper proposes to disentangle by analyzing Keynes' understanding of Mandeville, whose positions on these two issues were rather ambiguous, as well. Through a comparison of Keynes' reading of the Fable of the Bees with those of N. Rosenberg, F. Hayek and L. Dumont, it is shown that Mandeville' s and Keynes' positions are much more alike than is generally admitted. Furthermore, this similarity invites us to redefine such categories as « individualism », « holism », « liberalism » and « interventionism », which clearly are difficult to apply to either of these two authors

Nelson Goodman and architecture

Maurice Lagueux, 'Nelson Goodman and Architecture', Assemblage, 35 (April, 1998), pp. 18-35. © 1998 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published by the MIT Press

Rationalité et sélection naturelle en économie

Depuis la parution, en 1950, du célèbre article d'Armen Alchian, il est devenu assez fréquent d'invoquer la sélection naturelle pour appuyer certaines conclusions de l'économie néoclassique. Toute sélection n'étant toutefois pas de type « darwinien », il importe de bien distinguer les arguments qui invoquent la sélection naturelle au sens strict et les arguments crypto-téléologiques qui s'apparenteraientplutôt à un évolutionnisme de type lamarckien. A l'aide de quelques exemples fictifs, dont deux sont empruntés à un essai méthodologique de Milton Friedman de 1953, il est soutenu que les économistes doivent choisir entre des explications prétendument fondées sur la sélection naturelle et des explications fondées sur le principe de rationalité. Plus généralement, il est montré en conclusion, à l'aide de deux exemples supplémentaires, que les explications reposant sur des mécanismes impersonnels et celles reposant sur des activités intentionnelles ne peuvent être invoquées concurremment.Since the publication of Alchian's famous article of 1950, it has become relatively common to invoke natural selection as a justification of various conclusions in neoclassical economics. But because selection is not always of a "Darwinian" type, it is important to distinguish clearly between arguments which invoke natural selection in the strict sense of the word from crypto-teleological arguments which are rather more closely related to a Lamarkian evolutionary approach. With the help of fictional examples, two of which have been borrowed from Milton Friedman's 1953 essay on methodology, it is argued that economists mast choose between explanations supposedly based on natural selection and ones that are based on the principle of rationality. More generally, and with the help of two further examples, it is concluded that explanations based on a anonymous mechanism and those based on intentional activities can not be invoked concurrently

Economics and architecture

Collection : Routledge studies in the history of economics ;10