Economists do not communicate efficiently and methodologists<p> should expand their bailiwick to deal with this and with similar<p> practical problems. Both the quality of and the professional<p> prestige associated with popular writing should be enhanced. Aca-<p> demic economists need to pay more attention...</p></p></p></p>

In 1956 when Friedman published his "The Quantity Theory of Money: A Restatement" he faced a daunting task because of the widespread hostility to the quantity theory. This paper looks at the rhetoric (in the non-pejorative sense of the term) that he used to overcome this obstacle, and at some of...

How justified is the charge that ideology strongly influences the allegedly objective opinions of economists? An analysis of a new survey of AEA members and of surveys by Fuchs et al of labor economists and public economists shows that value judgments and judgments about the government's...

This contribution to a Festschrift for Warren Samuels argues that in giving policy advice economists should seek diversification and consider the probability of error, and also the loss function and risk aversion. And since advocacy of a theory is in a relevant way like a policy decision, the...

In his "Methodology of Positive Economics," Milton Friedman aimed to provide a useful heuristic for working economists and not a sophisticated philosophical analysis. Hence, one should be cautious about reading specific philosophical positions, such as instrumentalism, into it. In the context of...