让经济理论更加贴近现实

20世纪晚期的经济学越来越形式化,这一倾向使经济学远离了现实。这一时期,重要的似乎不再是经济思想,而是思想的表述方式,经济学家的历史责任被技术上的细节埋没。理论与历史相结合的经济学传统在配第、斯密和马克思的著作中都得到了充分的体现,然而,该传统到李嘉图就中断了,经济学摒弃了历史归纳法而采用抽象演绎法。历史学派则走向了另一端。新制度主义的兴起首先是一次方法论的变革,它从经济制度进化的途向来考察社会经济的发展,同时并不反对新古典理论的分析工具,从而"生产"出了理论。这种理论以一种崭新的面貌贴近现实,从而在一个新的高度上向现实回归。这集中表现在两个方面:一是经济学对其原先的理论假设进行更符合实际的修正;二是对研究领域所做的开拓。

Let Economics more Adapted to the Reality

Since the later 20th century, economics has become more and more stylized, which more like analytical tools used in the observable events, rather than well adapted to the reality. Economists seem to devote more attention to the style of expressing their ideas than to the ideas themselves. They are so busy to improve technical details that they forget their historical responsibility. Theories connected to history had been a tradition in the economics by William Petty, Adam Smith and Karl Marx, which has been suspended since Ricardo, who abandoned historical induction method and used abstract deduction method. The historical school went to the other extreme. It is the new institutional school who started a revolution of methodology. They observe social economic development from angle of the evolution of economic systems, while without giving up neoclassical analytical tools. The new theory seems more adapted to the reality featured in two important aspects: firstly it has revised the assumptions in previous theories and made them more adapted to the reality; secondly it opened up a new area of economic research.