The paper takes issue with the views expressed by Luis Bértola, Christopher Lloyd and Deirdre McCloskey in their commentaries. Many of the points raised are relevant and worth consideration. However, McCloskey's ill-informed critique is rejected along with her binary opposition between economy...

It is often said that history matters, but these words are often little more than a hollow statement. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the view that the economy is a mechanical toy that can be fixed using a few simple tools has continued to be held by economists and policy makers and...

The development of a mechanistic analytical approach – since mid-19th century to WWI, and beyond – is a well-known story in European economic thought, the story of Cournot, Jevons, Walras, Edgeworth, Pareto, and many others. We could refer to this tradition as “mathematical deductivism”,...