Seminar on economics imperialism, models of the market, and the market in the model, with Matthew Watson

Organized by The Work, Expertise, Technology, Organization (WETO) group

Date May 14, 2025 from.13.00 -15.00

Location Copenhagen Business School, Kilevej 14 A, 2000 Frederiksberg in Room K4.74 (4th floor)

Biographical Note: Matthew Watson is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick in the UK.  He also held a prestigious UK Economic and Social Research Council Professorial Fellowship between 2013 and 2019, and the book he will be talking about at the seminar is the central publication to date arising from that fellowship. The book is entitled False Prophets of Economics Imperialism: The Limits of Mathematical Market Models, and it is his sixth so far.

Title of talk: Complexities and Controversies on the Road to Social Scientific Unification: Exploring the Pre-History of Contemporary Economics Imperialism

Abstract: Economics imperialism is a phenomenon with which many social scientists today are readily familiar. It occurs when an explanatory framework designed for teaching undergraduates the underlying principles of economic theory reappears in other social science literatures as a potential competitor for subtler forms of context-specific empirical findings.  Such explanations clearly exist within very different epistemic domains, but they are often now presented by economics imperialists as if they are epistemologically interchangeable. My new book, False Prophets of Economics Imperialism, seeks to understand more about the intellectual foundations of these instances of what philosophers call scientific unification.  This requires not only a history of economists’ development of their mathematical market models, but also further histories of prior developments in the fields of both physics and mathematics.  Most discussions of economics imperialism today revolve mainly around normative questions: is it justifiable, yes or no? However, much more interesting insights can be revealed by thinking analytically about the complex path from the history of mathematics to the history of physics to the history of economics, all of which provide the pre-history for economics imperialism as it is practised today. The links are nothing other than extremely complicated between Lagrange’s introduction of the variational calculus, Maxwell’s equations that form the basis of quantum physics, Hilbert’s famous Paris lecture on the future of mathematics and Stigler and Becker recommending the development of a unified social science on the basis of economists’ price theory.  But they reveal a series of epistemic self-doubts amongst the economists most responsible for taking forward the programme of mathematising the market model, self-doubts that usually remain hidden in plain sight.  They also provide an important contrast to the bullishness of those who have promoted the agenda of economics imperialism for the social sciences as a whole.

For questions, contact José Ossandón jo.ioa@cbs.dk