Definition of Economics in Retrospective: Two Epistemological Tensions That Explain the Change of the Study Object in Economics

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Let me preface my comments by saying that a 2 week turnaround prohibits any real research into the paper and it's sources. I regret that my comments are therefore superficial. 

Lines 12-16. I don’t get this comment. There are more Journals, Textbooks, Conferences, etc… devoted to various heterodox approaches today than at any time in the history of economics. 

On current introductory textbooks alone, just a few that come to mind off the top of my head,

Wray — A Primer on Macroeconomics

Groenewagen et.al. - Institutional Economics

Kemp — Basic Macroeconomics

Schneider — Economic Principles and Problems

Knoedler — Introduction to Political Economy

Figart and Mutari - Economic Well Being

Lines 29- 32. OK - Are we talking about textbooks or economic thought? Econ textbooks generally define economics right at the start — similar to other fields. Scientific research, economics included, does not generally define the field at the onset. 

Lines 99 -120. The shift in economics from “Smithian” definitions to the modern “Mankiw” definition has been well covered in the lit already. E.g. see Backhouse and Medema (2009) in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.  This paper, and -- it's -- cited lit seems to cover everything presented here.  

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your thorough reading of our paper and your thoughtful recommendations. Your comments were constructive in guiding our revision. In the attached file you will find our answers. Please see the attachment. 

Kind regards, 

Authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your thorough reading of our paper and your thoughtful recommendations. Your comments were constructive in guiding our revision. In the attached file you will find our answers. Please see the attachment. 

Kind regards, 

Authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

After reading the article a few times, I do have a few comments that I believe that could improve its quality.

From the perspective of an economist (that has some interest in methodology and philosophy of economics), this is a quite simple article. Besides section 7 (and, even then, the argument could be more persuasive), it doesn’t add much to the literature that’s being published in journals such as the Journal of Economic Methodology or the History of Political Economy; so, the earlier sections, especially, feel like a revision of the history of economic thought classes.

But, you’re not submitting to an economics journal. Therefore, your audience is not composed of economists, but rather philosophers. The article must be written thinking on that. Because, in my reading, the article still reads as if it was written to economists. Why did you choose to start with Adam Smith? Why did you choose to focus on these authors specifically? Jump from Smith to Mill, without mentioning, for example, Ricardo (however, see Walter, 2021). The answer to these questions might be obvious to someone who completed even halfway an economics degree, but not a non-economist, that might read this journal. So an explanation of why you chose these authors specifically might be useful.

Another example comes from the use of the term “mainstream economics” instead of just “economics”, which I consider to be a positive point, but the existence of a mainstream economics implies the existence of a heterodox one, which most mainstream textbooks do not feel the need to take heed to. And you need to explain what exactly is the difference, because the reader of a non-economic journal might not be aware of it (for example, Dequech, 2007; Schäfer; Schuster, 2022).

Of course, the author does not need to be aware of literally every article of the field; even so, there are some references that could’ve been added. Backhouse and Medema (2009a,b) have written on the same issues before, on the lack of an unanimous definition of economics and how the Robbins one became the, more or less, more accepted; Tribe (2015; 2022) has also written extensively on the historical origins of economics, using history of economic thought and philology; although more related to classical political economy, and still in the same line as Tribe’s work, Walter (2021) writes on how CSPE was a style of discourse that resembled almost nothing today’s economics and how certain economists anachronically project modern economics into the past, considering that “political economy” is still a label that many economists still fight for defining it (Almeida, 2021).

Another important thing missing and this, in my opinion, shouldn’t be missing is the discussion whether economics is value-free. Robbins defined it as important to distinguish between economics and political economy (cf. Almeida, 2021), but this is a statement that’s questioned by heterodox approaches, such as the feminist one (Ferber; Nelson, 1993) and why Marx called CSPE “vulgar economy”. The issue is that this is such a dear issue to mainstream economists that they tend to exclude anyone from the main conversation that doesn’t subscribe to this idea (Waterman, 2019), and it’s already a very exclusionary discipline (Heckman; Moktan, 2020). See Malecka (2021).

There are controversies whether Menger should be considered a marginalist or not, see van’t Klooster (2022).

Since you mentioned Becker, a reference to economics imperialism could be useful, but I imagine it would deviate from the purpose of your article, so better talk about it in a footnote. Speaking of economics imperialism, it must be noted that the inclusion of behavioral economics in mainstream wasn’t complete, many insights were lost because they couldn’t fit well in the models (Davis, 2013). Some are even saying economics imperialism is receding (Ambrosino; Cedrini; Davis, 2023).

As much as I mentioned a lot of articles here, there’s no need to check all of them, it’s just my style of reviewing. I would like, however, that the authors to pay close attention to Backhouse and Medema (2009a,b) and Ambrosino et al 2023 and the issue with the question value-free/value-laden economics, in order to make the argument better and a focus on more contemporary discussions, what the article could really add to the literature, considering its target audience; what could make a reader of this journal interested in these issues related to the philosophy of economics, even if it’s to introduce them to these issues?

For these reasons, I chose “Reconsider after major revision”.

References

Almeida, R. G. From ‘What New Political Economy Is’ to ‘Why Is Everything New Political Economy?’. Economic Thought, v. 10, n. 2, 2021.

Ambrosino, A.; Cedrini, M.; Davis, J. B. Today’s economics: one, no one and one hundred thousand. European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2023 (forthcoming).

Backhouse, R. E.; Medema, S. G. On the definition of economics. Journal of Economic Perspectives, v. 23, n. 1, 2009a.

Backhouse, R. E.; Medema, S. G. Defining economics: the long road to acceptance of the Robbins definition. Economica, v. 76, n. s1, 2009b.

Davis, J. B. Economics Imperialism under the Impact of Psychology: The Case of Behavioral Development Economics. Oeconomia, v. 3, n. 1, 2013.

Dequech, D. Neoclassical, mainstream, orthodox, and heterodox economics. Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics, v. 30, n. 2, 2007.

Ferber, M. A.; Nelson, J. A. (ed.) Beyond economic man. Chicago, 1993.

Heckman, J.; Moktan, S. Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five. Journal of Economic Literature, v. 58, n. 2, 2020.

Malecka, M. Values in economics: a recent revival with a twist. Journal of Economic Methodology, v. 28, n. 1, 2021.

Schäfer, G. N.; Schuster, S. E. Mapping mainstream economics. Routledge, 2022.

Tribe, K. The economy of the word. Routledge, 2015.

Tribe, K. Constructing economic science. Oxford, 2022.

Van’t Klooster, J. Marginalism and scope in the early Methodensreit. Journal of the History of Economic Thought, v. 44, n. 1, 2022.

Walter, R. Before method and models. Oxford, 2021.

Waterman, A. M. C. The evolution of orthodoxy in economics: from Adam Smith to Paul Samuelson. Independent Review, v. 24, n. 3, 2019.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your thorough reading of our paper and your thoughtful recommendations. Your comments were constructive in guiding our revision. In the attached file you will find our answers. Please see the attachment. 

Kind regards, 

Authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The article has greatly improved from the last version. I believe one of the greatest strenght of the paper is to show the evolution of economics. Sometimes economics is stereotyped as just being the theoretical arm of neoliberalism (not a completely meritless critique, especially because orthodox economics refuses to confront the implicit values and assumptions in its purportedly value-free claims), which isn't a very useful proposition in relevant circles. In the newest version, I can see how improved the discussion between the history and methodology of economics has become.

Minor adjustments:

Line 103: replace for "19th century"

Line 472: "...rationality do not..."