Abstract
Paradox originally meant contrary to accepted opinion. In logic something more precise is usually intended. A paradox is involved, for example, if we are led to a contradiction by sound reasoning. Economists on the whole seem to have stayed closer to the original sense. We can use this fact to claim that there is ground for treating economists’ paradoxes simply as puzzling outcomes. There have been rhetorical appeals to ‘paradox’, as we shall see; but there are also numerous examples of substantive puzzles. They are to be expected as the limits to existing ways of explaining are explored. This usage has the advantage therefore of allowing us to treat paradoxes as a normal aspect of ongoing inquiry, and it shifts the focus of interest in them away from a status as intellectual curiosities to a status as stimulant to further research.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Allais, M., and O. Hagen, eds. 1979. Expected utility hypotheses and the Allais paradox. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Amihud, Y. 1979. Critical examination of the new foundations of utility. In Allais and Hagen (1979).
Arrow, K.J. 1951. Social choice and individual values. New York: Wiley.
Blaug, M. 1985. Economic theory in retrospect. 4th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Christensen, L.R., D.W. Jorgenson, and L.J. Lau. 1975. Transcendental logarithmic utility functions. American Economic Review 65: 367–383.
De Marchi, N. 1976. Anomaly and the development of economics: The case of the Leontief Paradox. In Methods and appraisal in economics, ed. S. Latsis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Elster, J. 1978. Logic and society. London: Wiley.
Harcourt, G.C. 1973. Some Cambridge controversies in the theory of capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hayek, F.A. 1931. The ‘paradox’ of saving. Economica 11: 125–169.
Keynes, J.M. 1930. A treatise on money. In The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 5 and 6. London: Macmillan for the Royal Economic Society. 1971.
Klant, J.J. 1984. The rules of the game. The logical structure of economic theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kuhn, T.S. 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions. Revised ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakatos, I. 1970. Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes. In Criticism and the growth of knowledge, ed. I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leamer, E.E. 1984. Sources of international comparative advantages: Theory and evidence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Leontief, W.W. 1953. Domestic production and foreign trade: The American capital position re-examined. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 97: 332–349.
Machina, M.J. 1983. The economic theory of individual behavior toward risk: Theory, evidence and new directions. Technical Report No. 433, Center for Research on Organizational Efficiency, Stanford University.
McCloskey, D.N. 1985. The rhetoric of economics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Morgan, M.S. 1984. The history of econometric thought. Analysis of the main problems of relating economic theory to data in the first half of the twentieth century. Ph.D. thesis, University of London.
Nelson, A. 1984. Some issues surrounding the reduction of macroeconomics to microeconomics. Philosophy of Science 51: 573–594.
Remenyi, J.V. 1979. Core demi-core interaction; toward a general theory of disciplinary and subdisciplinary growth. History of Political Economy 11: 30–63.
Safra, Z. and Karni, E. 1984. ‘Preference reversal’ and the theory of choice under risk. Working papers in economics no. 154, Department of Political Economy, Johns Hopkins University.
Samuelson, P.A. 1977. St Petersburg paradoxes: Defanged, dissected, and historically described. Journal of Economic Literature 15: 24–55.
Schoemaker, P.J.H. 1982. The expected utility model: Its variants, purposes, evidence and limitations. Journal of Economic Literature 20: 529–563.
Sen, A.K. 1985. Social choice and justice: A review article. Journal of Economic Literature 23: 1764–1766.
Smith, A. 1776. In An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. 2 vols, ed. R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.
Smith, V.R. 1985. John Stuart Mill’s famous distinction between production and distribution. Economics and Philosophy 1 (2): 267–284.
Stigler, G.J. 1965. Essays in the history of economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Weintraub, E.R. 1985. General equilibrium analysis: Studies in appraisal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
De Marchi, N. (2018). Paradoxes and Anomalies. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1885
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1885
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95188-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95189-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences