Armchair theorizing

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Armchair theorizing or armchair theorising is an unofficial term for the approach which economists are perceived to mostly use for coming up with a new economic theory.

"Economists can discover basic facts by observation of their own and other people's decision making. They even have the advantage of being able to observe the basic elements of their theoretical generalizations (human individuals and their strivings) directly, while the natural scientists must postulate or infer their basic but not directly observable elements from whatever phenomena they can observe directly. Much as geometers deduce many theorems from a few axioms, so economists deduce a powerful body of theory from a relatively few empirical generalizations, ones so crushingly obvious that their failure to hold true is almost inconceivable in the world as we know it. [...] Armchair theorizing need not be the mere sterile juggling of arbitrary assumptions; it can have a sound empirical basis." ^[1]

[edit] External links

• Planning Theory, In Defense of Armchair Theorizing, Seymour J. Mandelbaum, DOI: 10.1177/1473095206064975
• Discussion of On the Politics of Accounting Disclosure and Measurement: An Analysis of Economic Incentives, Dale Morse, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 19, Studies on Standardization of Accounting Practices: An Assessment of Alternative Institutional Arrangements (1981), pp. 36-42, doi:10.2307/2490981
• Henry George and Austrian economics - History of Thought, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Dec, 2001 by Leland B. Yeager

[edit] References