Theoretical Assumptions and Nonobserved Facts

Abstract

Economics today rides the crest of intellectual respectability and popular acclaim. The serious attention with which our pronouncements are received by the general public, hard-bitten politicians, and even skeptical businessmen is second only to that which was given to physicists and space experts a few years ago when the round trip to the moon seemed to be our only truly national goal. The flow of learned articles, monographs, and text-books is swelling like a tidal wave; Eco-nometrica, the leading journal in the field of mathematical economics, has just stepped up its publication schedule from