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Reaction to L. P. Fesenfeld in GAIA 30/3 (2021): Glimmers of hope: A global Green New Deal is feasible A Green New Deal is a necessary and viable tool to halt global heating while reducing socio-economic inequalities. Yet it is important to complement currently feasible designs like a Green New Deal with the removal of the remaining structural barriers to what is necessary in order to limit warming to 1.5 °C. A Green New Deal should focus on reducing energy demand while improving well-being. It needs to scale up public investment, while confronting fossil fuel dependencies and incumbent resistance.

This paper studies research interests, paradigmatic orientation and political involvement among roughly 700 full professors of economics at universities located in German-speaking countries. We collect biographical and institutional information on these professorships to derive indicators for research orientation, paradigmatic stance and political involvement. The main contribution of this paper is empirical; it documents the fairly homogeneous paradigmatic stance of German-speaking academic economics, analyzes the interplay between paradigmatic orientation and the policy process and contributes to a better understanding of the role of economic experts in German economic policymaking. Regarding the latter, we found that a highly asymmetric involvement of (under-represented) pluralist/heterodox perspectives relative to (over-represented) ordoliberal views in policy contexts is characteristic of economic policymaking in Germany.

This paper is concerned with the problem of modelling the tail of the wealth distribution with survey data when the data does not adequately cover the tail of the distribution. In order to deal with the problem post data collection, it is standard practice to either fit a Pareto tail to the data or to combine wealth survey data with observations from rich lists before fitting such a Pareto tail. This paper proposes a novel approach (’rank correction’) to address such cases which does not require additional data-sources. Applying the rank correction approach to wealth survey data (HFCS, SCF, WAS) yields estimates of top wealth shares, which are closely in line with estimates from the World Inequality Database and therefore represent a significant improvement over the raw survey data. While the paper focuses on the distribution of wealth as a case in point the rank correction approach might generally prove useful in contexts, where the tail of a Pareto-distributed variable is not adequately covered by the available data.

This paper surveys measures of economic openness, the latter being understood as the degree to which non-domestic actors can or do participate in a domestic economy. Based on the existing literature, the authors introduce a typology of openness indicators, which distinguishes between ‘real’ and ‘financial’ openness as well as ‘de-facto’ and ‘de-jure’ measures of openness. They use data collected on these indicators to analyze trends in openness over time and to conduct a correlation analysis across indicators. Finally, they illustrate the potential consequences of employing different openness measures in a growth regression framework. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10290-020-00391-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

This paper discusses the uneven consequences of the macroeconomic fallout from the Coronavirus and related economic policy responses against the background of an analysis of longer-term macroeconomic divergence in the Eurozone. We show that the macroeconomic impact of the Corona crisis is estimated to be more severe in Southern Eurozone countries than in Northern Eurozone countries, which further reinforces the tendency of an increasing economic polarisation. This polarisation process can be traced back to existing differences in production structures and uneven vulnerabilities of the underlying growth models. As a consequence, any policy response to the Corona crisis that does not take the deeper problems of structural polarisation into account will suffer from limited impact in the medium to long run. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s40812-020-00163-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

This paper analyses macroeconomic developments in the Eurozone since its inception in 1999. In doing so, we document a process of divergence and polarisation among those countries that joined the Eurozone during its first two years. We find evidence for a ‘core–periphery’ pattern among Eurozone countries, that is, however, marked by substantial heterogeneity within these two clusters. We show how the polarisation process underlying this pattern first manifested in increasing current account imbalances, before it translated unto the level of general macroeconomic development when the crisis hit. Empirically, we demonstrate how this macroeconomic divergence is tied to a ‘structural polarisation’ in terms of the sectoral composition of Eurozone countries; specifically, the emergence of export-driven growth in core countries and debt-driven growth in the Eurozone periphery can be traced back to differences in technological capabilities and firm performance. Pushing for convergence within Europe requires the implementation of industrial policies aiming at a technological catch-up process in periphery countries in combination with public investment and progressive redistributional policies to sustain adequate levels of aggregate demand in all Eurozone countries.

In this paper, we present results from of a large-scale replication of Hodgson and Rothman's (1999, The Economic Journal, 109(453): 165–186) seminal analysis of the institutional and geographical concentration of authors publishing in top economic journals. We analyze bibliometric data of more than 49,000 articles published in a set of 30 highly influential economic journals between 1990 and 2018. Based on a random sample of 3,253 authors, we further analyze the PhD-granting institutions of the authors under study to better scrutinize the claim of an ‘institutional oligopoly’. The findings confirm the long-term persistence of strong oligopolistic structures in terms of both, author affiliations as well as PhD-granting institutions.

This article is concerned with the impact of economic ideas on political processes and decision-making. We argue that economic models can serve as a transmission device between economic paradigms and policy programs, which allow actors drawing on the model to exercise power in decision-making. We illustrate this argument by focusing on the European Commission’s ‘potential output’ model, which represents a core pillar of EU fiscal governance as it provides estimates of ‘structural deficits’ for evaluating fiscal policies. We combine an analysis of the history and content of the model at stake with insights derived from policy documents, legal provisions, speeches and interviews. Our findings imply that economic models (a) allow for exerting power only under specific conditions, (b) align paradigmatic priors with policy proposals and (c) may constitute mutual feedback loops where political decisions are coined by technicalities and, as a consequence, seemingly innocent technical assumptions become objects of political demands.

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Citation metrics and its related indices and rankings have become increasingly important in the evaluation of research. Such indices are part of a more general tendency aiming for the simplification of complex and interconnected phenomena through quantification. The purpose of our contribution is to analyze the impact of such quantitative indices on the further development of science, with a special emphasis on economics. In this case, we observe a multitude of interesting effects on both the level of individual scientists and the global development of the discipline.

This paper analyzes the determinants of the European Commission’s estimates of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) for 14 European countries during 1985–2012. The NAIRU is a poor proxy for ‘structural unemployment’. Labor market institutions – employment protection legislation, union density, tax wedge, minimum wages – underperform in explaining the NAIRU, while cyclical variables – capital accumulation and boom-bust patterns in housing markets – play an important role. This finding is policy-relevant since the NAIRU is used to compute potential output and structural budget balances and, hence, has a direct impact on scope and evaluation of fiscal policies in Europe.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, governments have implemented several policy measures to counteract the collapse of the financial sector and the downswing of the real sector. Within a framework of Minsky–Veblen cycles, where relative consumption concerns, a debt-led growth regime and financial sector confidence constitute the main causes of economic fluctuations, we use computer simulations to assess the effectiveness of such measures. We find that the considered policy measures help mitigate the impact of financial crises, though they do so at the cost of shortening the time between financial crises. This result is due to a relatively fast recovery of solvency and confidence induced by the policy measures under study which contribute to an increase in private credit and, thereby, effective demand. Our results suggest that without the strengthening of financial regulation, any policy intervention remains incomplete.

ArgumentIn this paper we comparatively explore three claims concerning the disciplinary character of economics by means of citation analysis. The three claims under study are: (1) economics exhibits strong forms of institutional stratification and, as a byproduct, a rather pronounced internal hierarchy; (2) economists strongly conform to institutional incentives; and (3) modern mainstream economics is a largely self-referential intellectual project mostly inaccessible to disciplinary or paradigmatic outsiders. The validity of these claims is assessed by means of an interdisciplinary comparison of citation patterns aiming to identify peculiar characteristics of economic discourse. In doing so, we emphasize that citation data can always be interpreted in different ways, thereby focusing on the contrast between a “cognitive” and an “evaluative” approach towards citation data.

In the context of unfettered international competition, free trade tends to undermine basic moral concepts such as justice, dignity, and fairness. Therefore, we suggest moving to a new understanding of markets in international trade, which we call ‘civilized markets’. A civilized market tries to ensure that free entrepreneurship and open markets are eventually compatible with those basic and universal values that also serve as moral cornerstones of the European project. In order to accomplish a civilized market, we propose to establish a new European institution with a mandate to set and enforce minimum standards for goods sold on the European market.

This paper analyzes the dynamics of structural polarization and macroeconomic divergence in the context of European integration, where the latter is primarily understood as an increase in economic and financial openness. In the process of estimating the dynamic effects of such an openness shock on 26 EU countries, we develop a taxonomy of European economies that consists of four groups: core, periphery, and catching-up countries in Eastern Europe as well as financial hubs. We show that these four country groups have responded in a distinct way to the openness shock imposed by European integration and argue that the latter should be seen as an evolutionary process that has given rise to different path-dependent developmental trajectories. These trajectories are linked to the sectoral development of European economies and the evolution of their technological capabilities. We propose a set of interrelated policy measures to counteract structural polarization and to promote macroeconomic convergence in Europe.

In the wake of new digital technologies, organizations rely increasingly on contributions by external actors to innovate or even to fulfill their core tasks, including strategy-making processes. These external actors may take the form of crowds, where actors are isolated and dispersed, or of communities, where these actors are related and self-identify as members of their communities. While we know that including new actors in strategy-making may lead to tensions, we know little about how these tensions differ when either crowds or communities are concerned. Investigating this question by analyzing open strategy-making initiatives conducted by two non-profit organizations (Creative Commons and Wikimedia), we find that tensions with communities may be resolved with increasing openness in strategy-making, while crowds are better compatible with more exclusive strategy-making practices.

Der vorliegende Beitrag widmet sich einer wissenschaftstheoretischen Betrachtung neoklassischer Okonomie, die das konzeptionelle Fundament fur grose Teile des praktizierenden „Mainstreams“ okonomischer Forschung stellt. Dieses Fundament wurde durch Hans Albert im Besonderen mit dem von ihm formulierten „Modell-Platonismus“-Vorwurf einer kritisch-rationalen Kritik unterzogen. Im Folgenden wird diese Kritik rekonstruiert und hinsichtlich ihrer Rezeption und Aktualitat neu evaluiert.

Has the global financial crisis of 2007ff had a visible impact on the economics profession? To answer this question we employ a bibliometric approach and compare the content and orientation of economic literature before and after the crisis with reference to two different samples: A large-scale sample consisting of more than 440,000 articles published between 1956 and 2016 and a smaller sample of 400 top-cited papers before and after the crisis. Our results suggest that – unlike the Great Depression of the 1930s – the current financial crisis did not lead to any major theoretical or methodological changes in contemporary economics, although the topic of financial instability received increased attention after the crisis.

In this paper we comparatively explore three claims concerning the disciplinary character of economics by means of citation analysis. The three claims under study are: (1) economics exhibits strong forms of institutional stratification and, as a byproduct, a rather pronounced internal hierarchy, (2) economists strongly conform to institutional incentives and (3) modern mainstream economics is a largely self- referential intellectual project mostly inaccessible to disciplinary or paradigmatic outsiders. The validity of these claims is assessed by means of an interdisciplinary comparison of citation patterns aiming to identify peculiar characteristics of economic discourse. In doing so, we emphasize that citation data can always be interpreted in different ways, thereby focusing on the contrast between a ‘cognitive’ and an ‘evaluative’ approach towards citation data.

This paper analyzes the performative impact of the European Commission's model for estimating ‘potential output’, which is used as a yardstick for measuring the ‘structural budget balance’ of EU countries and, hence, is crucial for coordinating European fiscal policies. In pre-crisis years, potential output estimates promoted the build-up of private debt, housing bubbles and macroeconomic imbalances. After the financial crisis, these model estimates were revised downwards, which increased fiscal consolidation pressures. By focusing on the euro area's economies during 1999–2014, we show how the model's estimates influence actual economic outcomes. We identify two major economic impacts of the potential output model. First, the political implications of the model led to pro-cyclical feedback loops, reinforcing prevailing economic developments. Second, the model has contributed to national lock-ins on path dependent debt trajectories, fueling ‘structural polarization’ between core and periphery countries.

This paper extends the theoretical concept of wage-led and profit-led demand regimes by incorporating relative consumption concerns. Specifically, it integrates the Veblenian concept of conspicuous consumption into the Bhaduri–Marglin model by assuming that relative consumption concerns matter primarily within the working class. If in such a framework the profit share increases and the corresponding decrease in workers' income is distributed unevenly, efforts to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ may increase consumption and, hence, lead to a consumption-driven profit-led regime.

This paper reflects on the development leading to the recent crisis and interprets this development as a series of events within a Minsky-Veblen Cycle. To illustrate this claim we introduce conspicuous consumption concerns, as described by Veblen, into a stock flow consistent Post Keynesian model and demonstrate that, under these conditions, a decrease in income equality leads to a corresponding increase in debt-financed consumption demand. Here Minskyian dynamics come into play: increased credit demand leads to a corresponding rise in credit supply, which, eventually, gives rise to a debt-financed consumption boom. As the solvency of households decreases and interest rates move up, banks reduce lending, triggering household bankruptcies and, finally, a recession. What follows is a stable period of consolidation, where past debts are repaid, financial stability is regained and conspicuous consumption motives may gradually take over again. We illustrate this approach to the current crisis and its explanatory validity by extending our stock-flow consistent model into a dynamic simulation.

We applaud the effort of Schubert and Cordes (2013, this journal) to contribute a model describing the social mediation of preferences and to apply their results to the more general context of economic welfare. Although we consider this topic to be of utmost importance and interest, we have found a problem in Schubert and Cordes’ argument that renders their statements in Section 3 invalid. After providing some basic intuition on the problem at hand, we present a short proof showing that the assumptions of the model always lead to a stable society. We also report on an interesting non-linear segregation effect that can occur within the Schubert-Cordes model.

Ausgehend von der Einsicht, dass die Forderung nach Demokratie im Kontext privaten Konsums sowohl als Appell zu größerer individueller Wahlfreiheit als auch als Ausgangspunkt gemeinschaftlicher Regulierungsinitiativen verstanden werden kann, versucht der vorliegende Beitrag zu demonstrieren, dass nachhaltiger Konsum am ehesten über eine höhere Regulierungsintensität erreicht werden kann. Hierfür werden die, oft nachteiligen, Folgen einer "Privatisierung" von Nachhaltigkeitsbestrebungen im Konsumsektor illustriert und Vorschläge zu einer verstärkten Regulierung des Konsumsektors im Sinne größerer Nachhaltigkeit anhand von Fallbeispielen diskutiert.

We model the academic production process understood as the creation, submission, evaluation and publication of papers: scientists produce manuscripts to the best of their abilities and try to publish them in academic journals, which rely on referees to judge the submissions. The resulting model is able to reproduce several properties of the journal-landscape but also illustrates that even under unrealistically optimistic assumptions the process of scientific publishing will give rise to several universal emergent phenomena for purely mathematical reasons: the efficiency of scientific publishing is delicate and very unstable.

This paper analyzes the performative impact of the European Commission’s model for estimating ‘potential output’, which is used as a yardstick for measuring the ‘structural budget balance’ of EU countries and, hence, is crucial for coordinating European fiscal policies. In pre-crisis years, potential output estimates amplified the build-up of private debt, housing bubbles and macroeconomic imbalances. After the financial crisis, they were revised downwards, which increased fiscal consolidation pressures. By focusing on the euro area’s economies during 1999-2014, we identify two performative aspects of the potential output model. First, the political implications of the model led to a pro-cyclical feedback loop, reinforcing general economic developments. Second, the model has contributed to national lock-ins on path dependent debt trajectories, fueling ‘structural polarization’ between core and periphery.

It is a well-known criticism that if the distribution of wealth is highly concentrated, survey data are hardly reliable when it comes to analyzing the richest parts of society. This paper addresses this criticism by providing a general rationale of the underlying methodological problem as well as by proposing a specific methodological approach tailored to correcting the arising bias. We illustrate the latter approach by using Austrian data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey. Specifically, we identify suitable parameter combinations by using a series of maximum-likelihood estimates and appropriate goodness-of-fit tests to avoid arbitrariness with respect to the fitting of the Pareto distribution. Our results suggest that the alleged non-observation bias is considerable, accounting for about one quarter of total net wealth in the case of Austria. The method developed in this paper can easily be applied to other countries where survey data on wealth are available.

Introduction Quantitative indexing and evaluation is more and more being taken for granted within the scientific community. Meanwhile, it is an established practice to evaluate researchers, departments, or proposals for research grants by relying on the "Journal Impact Factor" of their publication outlets. Consequently, also the European Commission (directly (1)) and the British Research Assessment Exercise (indirectly (2)) rely on quantitative indexing to measure the quality of research output in economics. Individual academic careers, proposals for research grants, or the future of specific departments thus depend on the impact factors gathered by the particular researchers (cf. Lee and Eisner 2008). This standard procedure, somehow surprisingly, doesn't lead to skepticism of researchers. On the contrary, many scientists seem to internalize the rules of the "ranking game" and try to succeed within a given set of institutional mechanisms: That scientists ... try to achieve as much impact-factor-capital as possible has, from my point of view, to be understood as a fundamental law...." (Statement from an anonymous German medical scientist, cited according to Dobusch (2009), translation JK) This attitude is surprising for various reasons: First, it principally accepts the separation of content from the evaluation of academic texts, since the impact-factor calculations or the rankings based upon these calculations only count citations and are not directly concerned with the "intrinsic" quality of a certain contribution. Second, there are various biases incorporated in and numerous problems associated with the standard approaches of quantitative indexing, such as the indices provided by Thomson Scientific (TS), constituting a general problem rarely discussed in the economic community. The relative discrimination of heterodox economics within such an evaluation process is on the contrary a specific problem, only partially related to the general biases incorporated in the TS indices. These mere technical problems have to be understood as part of a larger discussion aimed at the journal culture in economics and other scientific disciplines. Since these topics are obviously related, a few remarks on this debate seem to be helpful to contextualize the arguments presented in this article. Generally, the journal culture in mainstream economics often relies on informal channels: "Top" authors often do not even "submit" their "submissions" but hand them in privately (cf. Shepherd 1995). Many authors anticipate criticism and a priori withhold or change arguments to please the editors or referees ("preference falsification"; see: Davis 2004; Bedeian 2003). Heterodox submissions seem to be, at last partially, rejected due to their methodological or political orientation (Reardon 2008). It is for these reasons that 60 percent of North-American economists agree in a survey that "a 'good-old-boy' network in the profession influences the probability of article acceptance, expressing the same strength and consensus of opinion as for school or business affiliation" (Davis 2007). "Old-boy" hits the point in this context since women are massively underrepresented in mainstream's editorial boards (Green 1998). Moreover, there are documented cases of uncorrected errors in mainstream economic journals (cf. Jong-a-Pin and de Haan 2008), strengthening the impression that review processes and editorial decisions are arbitrary to some extent. This is also evidenced by the noteworthy amount of hot papers in economics that were rejected by the peer reviewers at their first attempt to get published (cf. Gans and Shepherd 1994). Based on these considerations, the structure of this article is the following: First, I review and discuss several drawbacks of the most important quantitative indexing and evaluation standard Thomson Scientifics "Journal Impact Factor" (JIF) and the often perverse incentives related to this method of quality measurement (second and third sections). …

This article surveys some arguments brought forward in defense of the theory of perfect competition. While some critics propose that the theory of perfect competition, and thus also the theory of the firm, are logically flawed, (mainstream) economists defend their most popular textbook model by a series of apparently different arguments. Here it is examined whether these arguments are comparable, consistent and convincing from the point of view of philosophy of science.

First paragraphMit dem Ausbruch der größten Wirtschaftskrise seit den 1930er Jahren sehen manche, insbesondere heterodoxe Ökonominnen und Ökonomen, auch bereits das Ende der neoklassischen Vorherrschaft im Bereich ökonomischer Forschung und Lehre dräuen. Wie schon vor 1930 hat die herrschende volkswirtschaftliche Lehre die Krise nicht nur nicht vorhergesagt, sondern ihr mit naivem Vertrauen auf die Selbstregulierungskräfte und Allokationseffizienz von Märkten im Allgemeinen und Finanzmärkten im Speziellen sogar den Weg bereitet (Ferraro et al. 2005, Friedman/Friedman 2009). Warum soll es also nicht wie nach 1930 mit Keynes zu einem Wandel in der ökonomischen Disziplin kommen? Unserer Meinung nach ist eine Rückkehr des Keynesianismus nicht viel mehr als bloßes Wunschdenken. Erstens, weil spätestens seit Kuhn (1996) und Feyerabend (1977) klar ist, dass empirisches Scheitern keineswegs automatisch zu paradigmatischer Erneuerung sondern in der Regel nur zu neuen ›Puzzles‹ führt. Unangetastet bleiben dabei der »hard core« (Lakatos 1978), die zentralen Axiome des Paradigmas. Zweitens ist die intellektuelle Vorherrschaft, ja »paradigmatische Hegemonie« (Gramsci) des neoklassischen Denkens in der ökonomischen Disziplin 2009 ungleich robuster als sie es nach 1929 war. Dies nicht nur, weil damals Keynes' Thesen noch neu und unbefleckt von allzu mechanistischer Auslegung in späteren Jahren waren oder weil es mit institutionalistischen und marxistischen Ansätzen noch andere alternative Theoriestränge mit relativ großer Verbreitung gab. Der größte Unterschied sind unserer Ansicht nach institutionelle Veränderungen in der Organisation des Wissenschaftsbetriebs, die paradigmatischen Wandel schwieriger und unwahrscheinlicher machen.

Citation metrics has become an important tool in the assessment of scientific research. Journal rankings and productivity indices are thereby understood as signifying reputation and impact within a scientific community, which is interpreted as a proxy for the quality of research. In this respect, the introduction of citation metrics for research assessment is part of a larger social trend to simplify complex issues by means of numerical expressions. Against this backdrop, this paper takes a look at the effects of the introduction of evaluative scientometrics within the field of economics. It is shown that the “power of citation metrics” has manifold consequences: the instruments of citation metrics not only reinforce conventional patterns of academic reproduction and attention in scientific discourse, but also influence the behavior of single agents as well as the paradigmatic developments of academic disciplines. Zusammenfassung Zitationsmessungen und darauf basierende Indices und Ranglisten spi...

It is a well-known criticism that due to its exponential distribution, survey data on wealth is hardly reliable when it comes to analyzing the richest parts of society. This paper addresses this criticism using Austrian data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). In doing so we apply the assumption of a Pareto distribution to obtain estimates for the number of households possessing a net wealth greater than four million Euros as well as their aggregate wealth holdings. Thereby, we identify suitable parameter combinations by using a series of maximum-likelihood estimates and appropriate goodness-of-fit tests to avoid arbitrariness with respect to the fitting of the Pareto-Distribution. Our results suggest that the alleged non-observation bias is considerable, accounting for about one quarter of total net wealth. The method developed in this paper can easily be applied to other countries where survey data on wealth are available.

This paper provides an introduction to the Minsky-Veblen Cycles as a specific example of pluralist economic thinking in the context of the recent global economic crisis. It illustrates how pluralism can be applied to economic research. Specifically, the Minsky-Veblen Cycles combine three elements of institutional and post-Keynesian thought to explain key features of the current crisis. These elements are (1) John Maynard Keynes's postulate of effective demand, (2) Hyman Minsky's financial instability hypothesis, and (3) Thorstein Veblen's concept of conspicuous consumption. In this paper, we have a two-fold approach to them: First, we systematize the connection between the Minsky-Veblen Cycles as a theoretical argument and the epistemological rationale of a pluralist approach to economics. Second, we contrast the implications of our approach for incorporating behavioral assumptions in macroeconomic arguments to mainstream claims for a "microfoundation" of macroeconomic theory.

We argue that the main reason for the prevailing dissent in path dependence research methods is the futile attempt to capture “path dependence as a whole” within either a single-method research design or a single all-encompassing theoretical mechanism. By delineating two conceptual building blocks, path creation/emergence and positive feedback/lock-in, which rest on different epistemological foundations, we advocate for the application of complementary methods. We further refine our argument by proposing a general axiomatic structure for path dependence as a theoretical concept, which allows us to derive more specific methodological suggestions.

This paper discusses the role of mathematics as a conversational tool in economics. Based on the observation that mathematics is understood as an alternative language to express theoretical concepts and ideas, this paper reports experimental results trying to estimate the potential effects such a use of mathematics as a conversational tool may carry. These results refine certain intuitive statements about the role of mathematics in economic discourse and expose some unexpected effects in merit of further study. In particular, the results show that on average the mere presence of mathematics makes a problem seem more difficult, that mathematical knowledge is primarily attributed to specific training, that using mathematical expressions may decrease the proportion of people able to understand a certain argument and that mathematical arguments are more likely to convince men than women.

Roughly 50 years ago, the eminent German philosopher and social scientist Hans Albert presented a critique of ‘Model-Platonism’ in economics to describe essential elements of the ‘neoclassical style of economic reasoning’. Specifically, Albert advanced a series of epistemological arguments to illustrate conceptual shortcomings in neoclassical theory, which may be utilized to immunize the latter against conflicting empirical evidence. This article summarizes Albert's main arguments and illustrates his most important insights by using simple propositional logic. Based on these findings, a clarification and definition of ‘Model-Platonism’ is offered and the applicability of the Model-Platonism-critique to current developments in mainstream economics is assessed. Finally, two possible extensions of Albert's argument, the concepts of oscillating informational content and axiomatic variation, are illustrated with respect to their potential for immunization against critique.

In this paper we show that a rational consumer choice along the lines traditionally suggested might lead to paradoxical results if one considers multidimensional goods, which incorporate a series of incommensurable aspects. Thereby, we explore the similarity between the resulting paradox and Kenneth Arrow’s well known Impossibility Theorem. Based on these considerations we suggest a solution for the former problem along the lines of Herbert Simon and Amos Tversky, which might—if driven to its extreme—even provide a unique and arguably rational solution for consumer choice among multidimensional goods. Eventually, we argue that the resulting framework poses a potentially useful starting point for further developing an evolutionary theory of consumer choice.