Arrow-Debreu and the Bourbaki illusion of rigour

23 Jul, 2019 at 13:01 | Posted in Economics | 9 Comments

By the time that we have arrived at the peak first climbed by Arrow and Debreu, the central question boils down to something rather simple. We can phrase the question in the context of an exchange economy, but producers can be, and are, incorporated in the model. There is a rather arid economic environment referred to as a purely competitive market in which individuals receive signals as to the prices of all goods. All the individuals have preferences over all bundles of goods. They also have endowments or incomes defined by the prices of the goods, and this determines what is feasible for them, and the set of feasible bundles constitutes their budget set. Choosing the best commodity bundle within their budget set determines their demand at each price vector. Under what assumptions on the preferences will there be at least one price vector that clears all markets, that is, an equilibrium? Put alternatively, can we find a price vector for which the excess demand for each good is zero? The question as to whether a mechanism exists to drive prices to the equilibrium has become secondary, and Herb Scarf’s famous example (1960) had already dealt that discussion a blow.

The warning bell was sounded by such authors as Donald Saari and Carl Simon (1978), whose work gave an indication, but one that has been somewhat overlooked, as to why the stability problem was basically unsolvable in the context of the general equilibrium model. The most destructive results were, of course, already there, those of Hugo Sonnenschein (1974), Rolf Mantel (1974), and Debreu (1974) himself. But those results show the model’s weakness, not where that weakness comes from. Nevertheless, the damage was done. What is particularly interesting about that episode is that it was scholars of the highest reputation in mathematical economics who brought the edifice down. This was not a revolt of the lower classes of economists complaining about the irrelevance of formalism in economics; this was a palace revolution.

Alan Kirman

Mainstream theoretical economics is still under the spell of the Bourbaki tradition in mathematics. Theoretical rigour is everything. Studying real-world economies and empirical corrobation/falsification of theories and models nothing. Separating questions of logic and empirical validity may — of course — help economists to focus on producing rigorous and elegant mathematical theorems that people like Lucas and Sargent consider as “progress in economic thinking.” To most other people, not being concerned with empirical evidence and model validation is a sign of social science becoming totally useless and irrelevant. Economic theories building on known to be ridiculously artificial assumptions without an explicit relationship with the real world is a dead end. That’s probably also the reason why Neo-Walrasian general equilibrium analysis today (at least outside Chicago) is considered a total waste of time. In the trade-off between relevance and rigour, priority should always be on the former when it comes to social science. The only thing followers of the Bourbaki tradition within economics — like Karl Menger, John von Neumann, Gerard Debreu, Robert Lucas and Thomas Sargent — has given us are irrelevant model abstractions with no bridges to real-world economies. It’s difficult to find a more poignant example of a total waste of time in science.

Applying an axiomatic hypothetico-deductive system to the real world can only be done by means of a mapping, which creates a model for the axiomatic system. These mappings then lead to assertions about the real world which require empirical verification. These assertions (which are proposed scientific laws) can NEVER be proven in the sense that mathematical theorems can be proven …

The scientific method arose as a rejection of the axiomatic method used by the Greeks for scientific methodology. It was this rejection of axiomatics and logical certainty in favour of empirical and observational approach which led to dramatic progress in science. However, this did involve giving up the certainties of mathematical argumentation and learning to live with the uncertainties of induction. Economists need to do the same – abandon current methodology borrowed from science and develop a new methodology suited for the study of human beings and societies.

Asad Zaman

Models may help us think through problems. But we should never forget that the formalism we use in our models is not self-evidently transportable to a largely unknown and uncertain reality. The tragedy with mainstream economic theory is that it thinks that the logic and mathematics used are sufficient for dealing with our real-world problems. They are not! Model deductions based on questionable assumptions can never be anything but pure exercises in hypothetical reasoning. And that kind of reasoning cannot establish the truth value of facts. Never has. Never will.