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Symposium on Marshall's Tendencies: 3 Sutton on Marshall's Tendencies: A Comment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2002

Carl F. Christ
Carl F. Christ
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Abstract

Professor Sutton's thought-provoking book is directed principally to the question: ‘Are simple mathematical models helpful in economics, or are they misleading?’ His answer, baldly stated, is that if they are made right they are helpful, but if they are made wrong they are misleading.

He has in mind an ideal reader: someone who already knows from other fields how a successful theory based on formal mathematical models works, but who has only recently stumbled on economics, and is skeptical about formal mathematical models here. I am not quite an ideal reader now, but I was once, because I studied and worked in physics before going into economics.

Type
Review Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , April 2002 , pp. 21 - 27
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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