A Review of Kuhnian and Lakatosian “Explanations” in Economics

As in the case of Kuhn, alternative schools have been recognized in Lakatosian
terms. A. W. Coats (1976, pp. 49-50) identified the Institutional school as another
Lakatosian programme in economics describing five hard core propositions and four
positive heuristics. Blaug in a paper (1983), argued that the programme of radical
economics, although less coherent than the neoclassical one, can also be identified as a
Lakatosian SRP. Brown (1981) after presenting the hard core propositions of the
Keynesian school of thought, described the main ingredients of a post-Keynesian research
program. Another MSRP has been identified by Rizzo (1982) and Langlois (1982) with
reference to an alternative economic approach, namely the Austrian School of economics.
Rizzo and Langlois described an Austrian programme in the Lakatosian lines having five
hard core propositions and three positive heuristics. Nightingale (1994) tried to trace a
Lakatosian program in the recent approach of evolutionary economics. He describes its
five hard core propositions, its protective belt content and its positive heuristics. Moreover,
he believes that this programme is richer than the neoclassical research programme “with
more content to its positive heuristic, a less prescriptive hard core, and capable of
accepting a wider range of auxiliary assumptions within its protective belt for purpose of
using it for scientific investigations” (1994, p. 248). The main points of the above
discussion are presented in table 4:

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