Economics for Real

3  Mäki's MISS

Daniel M. Hausman

The worst thing about Uskali Mäki's view of Models as Isolations and Surrogate Systems is that its acronym, MISS, suggests that his view misses something – that it has gotten something wrong. But that's not how I intend my title to be taken. His MISS is clearly a hit – maybe not a home run – but definitely not a strikeout or a foul ball.

As merely a cursory acquaintance with economics confirms, contemporary economists typically describe their intellectual constructions and analytical tools as models. Economists still speak sometimes of theories, but only when referring to subdivisions of the discipline, such as finance theory, trade theory, game theory or when they are referring to intellectual structures designed ...