Week 2

Question 1

Logical positivism

Answer 1

Its a philosophy of science. Logic: provide the formal framework (language) in which the scientific claims are best to be put. All human knowledge of the world is amenable to logical formalization. In the formal logic we just name something a claim a ‘proposition’and assign a value to it (true or false, 1 or 0).
Positivism: all scientific evidence and thus knowledge is directly or indirectly derived from sensual date. Science is characterized by the ability to formulate theories.

Question 2

Analytics

Answer 2

1 + 1 = 2. the truth 2 is already included in the premises 1 + 1. Given the assumptions of the Ricardian model, international trade is mutually beneficial.

Question 3

Synthetic

Answer 3

Confirmed by empirical research (deductive)
As the emprical research demonstrates, people value an object higher when they do not posses it.

Question 4

empirically verifiable

Answer 4

you can verify whether it is true or false by drawing gon sense perception

Question 5

Deduction

Answer 5

Goes from the general to the specific

Question 6

Induction

Answer 6

Goes from the specific to the general.

Question 7

operationalization

Answer 7

Going from the theoretical statements to the observational statements. The operationalization is making theoretical statements observational statements. How do you make your theory testable in the empirical word.

Question 8

Problem with induction.

Answer 8

Even if all the swans we have observed so far are white, there might appear another swan, which is black!

Question 9

Inductive differences

Answer 9

Two or more instances of an event (effect) are compared to see what they all do not have in common. If they have all but one thing in common, that one thing is identified as the cause.

Question 10

Method of ceteris paribus

Answer 10

keeping everything else the same. This is used for models and to use your mind as a laboratory. Deduction from the abstraction of home economics.

Question 11

Universal Laws

Answer 11

Whenever X, Y. But universal laws hold only under quite specific conditions.
Economics laws could be thought of as tendency laws: regularities that are true in the abstract,
but contaminated by various disturbances in the real world.

Question 12

Tendency claims

Answer 12

Claims about a regularity that would hold if disturbing factors were absent. This means that laws are unviersallyt rue if not interpreted literally (not as actual phenomena) but as descriptions of tendencies.

Question 13

What is a tendency

Answer 13

Tendencies are causes like MV=PT, changes in M cause changes in P. Causal factors fully operating only in the absence of disturbing factors like given the high rate of innovations, the rise in M could
even decrease P! Causal factors still operating even in the presence of disturbing factors (but perhaps
not fully visible). Even if P decreases, it decreases less than without the increase in M

Question 14

composition of causes

Answer 14

simply add up all the forces (causal factors) that influence our behavior and pull it in different directions. The sum of different tendencies.

Question 15

Which science is closer to economics?

Answer 15

Engineering and medicine. (evidence based approach, experimental approach, the way you test drugs we test economic theories.

Question 16

Laws can substitute data

Answer 16

If we dont have a lot of data on changes in taxes theory can help out. Because theory would tell us that raising tax will always mean the same as raising prices, so we can use the (more available) data on price elasticities.

Question 17

Rationality; transitivity of prefernces

Answer 17

(If A ≥ B and B ≥ C than A ≥ C)