“Economic Methodology in a Nutshell”, Dan Hausman, 1989

A discussion of four schools of thought in judging the value of an economic methodology: the Millian deductive approach (are the assumptions accurate?), the Popperian approach (are we trending toward falsifiable claims in econ research?), Freidman 1953 (does the model make good predictions about an area we care about), and the eclectic approach (is a school of thought internally consistent? is there any just basis for judging one school above another?). Makes the valid point that every assumption, by definition, proves itself (i.e., A implies A), which is, in some sense, troubling for supporter’s of the Friedman idea that we should only care about predictions.

http://www.iei.liu.se/content/1/c6/10/68/79/AS7.pdf

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