Causality in economics

Is economics a science? This distin guished and provocative book calls into question the increasing tendency of eco nomists to attach themselves to the coat-tails of the scientists. Thus it is not concerned with the scientific method in economics, but with the relation of scientific method to economic method, of scientific explanation to economic explanation; for to discover the cause of a phenomenon or of an event is to explain it.

Although it is now fifty years since the author began to write on economics, he has succeeded in looking at economics from the outside and provided a book that examines causality in economics as one case of causality in general. This unconventional approach throws new light on some basic concepts of economic theory. The place of statistical techniques in the sciences and in economics is examined and a corresponding distinction drawn.

Sir John Hicks is Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and until 1965 was Pro fessor of Economics at the University of Oxford. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972. Amongst his many publications is The Crisis In Keynesian Economics, also published by Blackwell.