Economic Science: An Inquiry into the Modern Approach

Abstract

It is jovially said that if there are four economists there would be five or more opinions! Perhaps this statement is supported by the numerous theories that do exist for value, price, inflation, business cycles, growth, consumption, investment, etc. In fact it is really difficult in economics to find an economic concept that has only one theory! It is only economists, though economics is being claimed as a science by many, who find it very difficult to measure the measuring instrument ‘money’ and the special unit of measurement ‘monetary unit’. This paper attempts to highlight some of the methodological issues such as the objects of study in economic science, the measurement, the objects of measurement, focus of economists approach, tools of teaching and learning process to overcome the handicap imposed by the widely used two-dimensional graphs in economics, missing factors, etc. These issues suggest taking caution in the modern approach in economics. This paper suggest to use a new modeling technique ‘Half-Arrow Modeling Technique’ to integrate the theories to have a holistic view besides proposing a new production function, the source of many divergences in opinion.

Keywords: Economics, Economic Science, Methodology, Modern approach, Causalities, causal-time, holistic view, modeling technique, factors of production, production function