Economic Modelling as Robustness Analysis

By Jaakko Kuorikoski, Aki Lehtinen, C. Marchionni. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2010

170 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We claim that the process of theoretical model refinement in economics is best characterised as robustness analysis: the systematic examination of the robustness of modelling results with respect to particular modelling assumptions. We argue that this practise has epistemic value by extending William Wimsatt’s account of robustness analysis as triangulation via independent means of determination. For economists robustness analysis is a crucial methodological strategy because their models are often based on idealisations and abstractions, and it is usually difficult to tell which idealisations are truly harmful. 1. Introduction2. Making Sense of Robustness3. Robustness in Economics4. The Epistemic Import of Robustness Analysis5. An Illustration: Geographical Economics Models6. Independence of Derivations7. Concluding Remarks Introduction Making Sense of Robustness Robustness in Economics The Epistemic Import of Robustness Analysis An Illustration: Geographical Economics Models Independence of Derivations Concluding Remarks

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, History and Philosophy of Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8bdea3924042a2e0254c918e4efed6e20b7d051f

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. Jay Odenbaugh
2. Julian Reiss
3. Anna Alexandrova

In History and Philosophy of Science

1. Jay Odenbaugh
2. Julian Reiss
3. Anna Alexandrova
4. Ingo Brigandt

Citations in the corpus

• Buyer beware: robustness analyses in economics and biology (2011, background): “Thus the errors that different tractability assumptions might introduce are independent of each other as required by robustness analysis ( Kuorikoski et al. 2010, 22 ).”
• The explanation paradox (2012, background): “But some models also explain, and it is this function that the views discussed in this subsection cannot account for.”