Words, Objects and Events in Economics : The Making of Economic Theory

With all their graphs, models and puzzles that sometimes fill first-year students with awe and wonder, economics textbooks are relatively simple in their content. They sketch what seems to be a logical, if abstract, picture of the economic world, but they do not engage with any of the serious difficulties that in modern economic theory passes for economic practice and policy. You will not learn from them that economics does not have an ontologically objective subject, that economic life is the product of human (collective) intentionality or that there are more demanding elements in economic decision making than finding means to a given end. The book before you, on the other hand, examines a long list of mysteries hidden from those elementary advances in economics that are reproduced more or less consciously by theorists, practitioners and students of economics who in their studies have not been daring enough to challenge or qualify received economic wisdom. Insofar, it is argued here, as these ‘hidden’ aspects of economic reality are important for its explanation and description, they