An Instrument Can Make a Science: Jevons's Balancing Acts in Economics

Maas, Harro

doi:10.1215/00182702-33-suppl_1-277

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Historians of science have repeatedly documented the roles in theory development played by researchers with hands-on experience with instrumentation, as when Kuhn (1977) notes that seven of the nine pioneers in quantifying energy conversion processes were either trained as engineers or were working with engines when they made their contributions. Indeed, this attitude that an instrument can make a science was taken from physics into economics by both Stanley Jevons and Irving Fisher in their uses of the balance scale as a model of market equilibrium (Boumans et al, 2001;Maas et al, 2001).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theory-Based Metrological Traceability in Education: A Reading Measurement Network

Fisher

Stenner

2022

Explanatory Models, Unit Standards, and Personalized Learning in Educational Measurement

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Huge resources are invested in metrology and standards in the natural sciences, engineering, and across a wide range of commercial technologies. Significant positive returns of human, social, environmental, and economic value on these investments have been sustained for decades. Proven methods for calibrating test and survey instruments in linear units are readily available, as are data- and theory-based methods for equating those instruments to a shared unit. Using these methods, metrological traceability is obtained in a variety of commercially available elementary and secondary English and Spanish language reading education programs in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Australia. Given established historical patterns, widespread routine reproduction of predicted text-based and instructional effects expressed in a common language and shared frame of reference may lead to significant developments in theory and practice. Opportunities for systematic implementations of teacher-driven lean thinking and continuous quality improvement methods may be of particular interest and value.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theory-Based Metrological Traceability in Education: A Reading Measurement Network

Fisher

Stenner

2022

Explanatory Models, Unit Standards, and Personalized Learning in Educational Measurement

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“…Visiblemente, en el análisis econométrico de series de tiempo, tenemos los datos como insumos y como productos; por ejemplo, estimamos propensiones marginales y elasticidades. Y en el extremo, amable lector -cabe sorprenderse-, Harro Maas [2001] afirma, incorrectamente, creemos: "un instrumento puede hacer una ciencia (por ejemplo): las hojas de balance elaboradas por Jevons" [277].…”

Section: La Era De La Medición En Economíaunclassified

Ensayos selectos sobre macroeconomía de economías emergentes

2023

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En la teoría macroeconómica tradicional existe una gran diversidad de enfoques teóricos y políticas económicas para las economías desarrolladas o industrializadas, y no existe acuerdo sobre cuál es la más adecuada para su estudio; además, la crisis de 2008 puso en evidencia la ineficacia del enfoque de la macroeconomía dominante para prevenirla, explicarla y resolverla. La teoría macroeconómica para las economías emergentes no es la excepción y aún se está escribiendo. Lo que por lo regular se ha hecho, en la mayoría de los casos, es aplicar mecánicamente los modelos de los países desarrollados. Se ha utilizado una teoría y política económica basada y promovida por los organismos internacionales como el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI), el Banco Mundial (BM) o la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU). Esta recopilación de ensayos sobre macroeconomías emergentes contribuye a cubrir esta ausencia, por lo que su lectura proporcionará a los estudiantes las herramientas teóricas, metodológicas y técnicas del análisis macroeconómico moderno a la vez que se presentan los problemas económicos, enfoques teóricos y temas específicos de las economías emergentes

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“…Working on an independent line of research, historians of economics and econometrics have documented another extension of the Standard Model. Analogies to the new field of energetics made in the period 1850-1880, and the use of the balance scale as a model by early economists, such as Stanley Jevons and Irving Fisher, are widespread (Boumans, 2005;Maas, 2001). For instance, in Walras' first effort at formulating a mathematical expression of economic relations, he 'attempted to implement a Newtonian model of market relations, postulating that "the price of things is in inverse ratio to the quantity offered and in direct ratio to the quantity demanded"' (Mirowski, 1988, p. 2).…”

Section: Frisch's Decisive and Indirect Intellectual Influence On Raschmentioning

confidence: 99%

Separation Theorems in Econometrics and Psychometrics: Rasch, Frisch, Two Fishers and Implications for Measurement

Fisher

2021

Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics

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In 1959, Ragnar Frisch prompted Georg Rasch to formalise a separability theorem that continues today to serve as the basis of a wide range of theoretical and applied developments in psychological and social measurement. Previously unnoted are the influences on Rasch exerted by Frisch’s concerns for data autonomy, model identification and necessary and sufficient conditions. Although Rasch acknowledged Frisch’s prompting towards a separability theorem, he did not acknowledge any substantive, intellectual debt to him, nor to Irving Fisher, but only to Ronald Fisher. Rasch appears to have developed a special interest in sufficiency and identified models when studying with Frisch in 1935, and in 1947, when Rasch accompanied Tjalling Koopmans to the University of Chicago and the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics. I. Fisher’s separation theorem continues to be relevant in econometrics, and interest in Rasch’s separability theorem is growing as the measurement models based on it are adopted in metrological theory and practice. The extensive interrelations between measurement science, metrological standards and economics suggest paths towards lower transaction costs and more efficient markets for individualised exchanges of human, social and natural capital. Equally, if not more, surprising are the implications for a poetic art of complex, harmonised relationships played out via creative improvisations expressed using instruments tuned to shared scales. JEL: B41, C10, C13, C20, C42, D70, E60, H54, I11, I21, I31, P11

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An Instrument Can Make a Science: Jevons's Balancing Acts in Economics

Cited by 8 publications

References 52 publications

Theory-Based Metrological Traceability in Education: A Reading Measurement Network

Theory-Based Metrological Traceability in Education: A Reading Measurement Network

Ensayos selectos sobre macroeconomía de economías emergentes

Separation Theorems in Econometrics and Psychometrics: Rasch, Frisch, Two Fishers and Implications for Measurement

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