macroeconomics. In a subsequent work (1992), he suggested not to abandon Lakatos in
economics but to adopt a modified MSRP “to allow for greater variety of types of research
programme, retaining its appraisal criterion intact” (1992, p. 32).10
Fulton’s (1984) paper was an early attempt to review some attempts at the
application of Lakatos’ methodology of SRP. He argued that notion of MSRP should be
applied to individual economic theories and not to the entire discipline. Then, he fitted a
Lakatosian programme to neoclassical production theory (1984, pp. 195-201) showing its
presuppositions, the content of the hard core beginning in 1880s and 1990s by J.B.Clark,
Wicksteed, Wicksell, Walras, Marshall, and others and having as its second stage the
Hicksian theory of wages and as its third stage Robinson’s critique of the theory of capital.
According to Fulton, neoclassical production theory consists of three hard core
propositions and four positive heuristics.
Weintraub (1985a, pp. 25-6; 1985b, pp. 108-113) applies Lakatosian thinking to the
development of the general equilibrium analysis. He identifies the hard core of this
programme as well as some positive and negative heuristics. Then, he argued that the
general equilibrium theory of the neo-Walrasian type exhibits the main Lakatosian
properties. In another paper (1988, pp. 214-5) he additionally claimed that this program
is empirically progressive in the Lakatosian sense and presented its six hard core
propositions, two positive heuristics and three negative heuristics.11
Vint (1994) used the Lakatosian methodology to show that the classical wage fund
theory “had a period of genesis, a period of successful existence and a period of
degeneration, refuting and abandonment” (1994, p. 5). Thus, he claimed that the “Lakatosian
framework can provide the points of departure and analytical tools with which to approach
many questions in the history of economics in general, and the history of classical wage
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