When economics is living up to its promise as a science, economists collect data, run equations and come up with answers about what people in societies do with their real and financial resources. Based on these dispassionate findings, individuals make decisions, businesses develop plans, and governments form policies that effect millions of lives. But economics hasn’t always been so data-driven, and some economists have a different agenda. They cling to an older, nonscientific approach, driven by value-laden inquiries into what is best for society.
Positive Economics: Economics Becomes a Science traces the evolution of Adam Smith’s 18th century moral philosophy into a modern practice that uses data to reliably discover complex truths about people’s economic behavior. Written by Steven R. Cunningham, PhD, AIER’s director of research and education, this brief history traces the passionate intellectual debates and hard-won technical developments that gave birth to a modern social science. As Cunningham points out, the science of economics remains a work-in-progress. Today, ever-more powerful computers and increasingly sophisticated analytic models continue to create opportunities for understanding economic behavior that were unthinkable just a few decades ago.