Here is the provisional program of the Econ-Fun Symposium (10-11 December 2010, Rotterdam):
10.12.2010 Friday
09:00 – 09:30 Welcome
09:30 – 10:30 Diane Coyle (keynote): “Who’s laughing now at the dismal science?”
10:30 – 10:45 Break: Coffee etc.
10:45 – 11:30 Uskali Mäki: “On the philosophy of the new kiosk economics of everything”
11:30 – 12:15 N. Emrah Aydinonat: “The two images of economics: Why the fun disappears when important questions are at stake?”
12:15 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 14:15 Jack Vromen: “Finding the Right Levers; Introducing Fines in Kindergartens and All That…”
14:15 – 15:00 Peter M. Spiegler: “The Unbearable Lightness of the Economics-Made-Fun Genre”
15:00 – 15:15 Break: Coffee etc.
15:15 – 16:00 Björn Frank: “Economic Page Turners”
16:00 – 16:45 Paul Teule & Erwin Dekker: “Economics made fun, and made fun of”
16:45 – 17:00 Break: Coffee etc.
17:00 – 18:00 Robert H. Frank (keynote): “The Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment”
19:00 Conference Dinner
11.12.2010 Saturday
10:30 Coffee
10:45 – 11:30 Jean Baptiste Fleury: “The Evolving Notion of Relevance: An Historical Perspective to the “Economics-Made-Fun” movement”
11:30 – 12:15 Edward Nik-Khah and Rob Van Horn: “Inland Empire: Economics Imperialism as an Imperative of Chicago Neoliberalism”
12:15 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 14:15 Roger Backhouse: “Economics is a serious (and difficult) subject”
14:15 – 15:15 Ariel Rubinstein (keynote): “Are economists economic agents?”
15:15 – 15:30 Closing
Here is another look at the role of models and simulations in social sciences:
Tools of Toys? On Specific Challenges for Modeling and the Epistemology of Models and Computer Simulations in the Social Sciences by Eckhart Arnold. Available online, here!
Warren J. Samuels’ review of The Invisible Hand in Economics kindly starts with the following sentence:
This study by a sensitive and imaginative intellect is a substantive contribution to the literature developing the meaning of the concept of ‘‘the invisible hand’’ while simultaneously attempting to establish how interpretation can be structured to convey ‘‘understanding’’ albeit not ‘‘truth.’’
However, Samuels review is the most critical review I have recieved so far. You may read the full review here.
Notes on Economics and the Future of Quantitative Social Science
Andrew J. Oswald (University of Warwick)
Abstract This brief paper is written for a meeting in Cambridge-Mass in May 2010. It offers speculations on the scientific future of economics (and some of the quantitative parts of social science). It is closer to guesswork than science and is not designed to be a careful, full study. As an aid to anyone interested in possible trends, it provides data on the most-referenced journal articles in modern economics.
Read the full article here (pdf)!