000			01597nam a2200181Ia 4500
999			_c2182 _d2182
005			20220513160940.0
008			200202s9999 xx 000 0 und d
082			_a332.4 FRI
100			_aFriedman, Milton.
245		0	_aEssays in positive economics
260			_aLondon
260			_bThe University of Chicago Press
260			_c1959
300			_a328 p.
520			_aIn this admirable book on The Scope and Method of Political Economy John Neville Keynes distinguishes among "a positive science...a body of systematized knowledge concerning what is; a normative or regulative science...a body of sys tematized knowledge discussing criteria of what ought to be ; an art ...a system of rules for the attainment of a given end"; comments that "confusion between them is com mon and has been the source of many mischievous errors"; and urges the importance of "recognizing a distinct positive science of political economy."¹ This paper is concerned primarily with certain methodological problems that arise in constructing the "distinct positive science" Keynes called for-in particular, the problem how to decide whether a suggested hypothesis or theory should be tentatively accepted as part of the "body of systematized knowledge con cerning what is." But the confusion Keynes laments is still so rife and so much of a hindrance to the recognition that econom ics can be, and in part is, a positive science that it seems well to preface the main body of the paper with a few remarks about the relation between positive and normative economics.
650			_aPrices
942			_cB _2ddc