Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T20:18:00.286Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The economic imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2023

Mike Hill
Affiliation:
University of Albany, USA
Warren Montag*
Affiliation:
Occidental College, USA
*
Corresponding author: Warren Montag, OccidentalCollege, 1600 Campus Road, Los Angeles, CA 90041, USA. Email:montag@oxy.edu
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

To apply the term ‘magical’ to modern economic thought is to suggest that there remains within it an unassimilated and unexamined residue of irrational thought. Further, it is to hold that this remnant persists despite the discipline's century long attempt to create a ‘pure’ form of economic science. The specific instance of irrationality to which we refer is perfectly visible but systematically overlooked because it exists in economics' most basic assumptions: not only the assumptions about the causal mechanisms that determine human action, but even more in what is increasingly acknowledged to be the theoretical Achilles heel of economics, the concept of the market itself.

Type
Forum: Money’s other worlds
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© 2015 The Author(s)

References

Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Frisch, R. (1926) Sur un probleme d'economie pure. Norsk Matematisk Forenings Skrifter, I(16): 140.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated by Burger, T.. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hill, M. and Montag, W. (2015) The Other Adam Smith. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Konings, M. (2015) The Emotional Logic of Capitalism: What Progressives Have Missed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. (1985/1710) Theodicy, translated by Huggard, E. M.. La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Samman, A. (2015) Money's other worlds: An introduction. Finance and Society, 1(2): 2326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelley, M. (1994/1831) Frankenstein. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Smith, A. (1984/1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Smith, A. (2015/1776) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 2 Volumes. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Vogl, J. (2015) The Specter of Capital, translated by Redner, J. and Savage, R.. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Yuran, N. (2014) What Money Wants: An Economy of Desire. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar