Research
You will find a complete range of our peer-reviewed monographs, multi-authored and edited works, including original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
This final chapter outlines a conceptual framework called ‘anthropinism’ for understanding how particular economic events are comprehended through general meanings. It argues that meaning should be taken for granted, focusing instead on how the intelligible is articulated into conceptions that shape perception. The chapter introduces key ideas like the ‘here and now’ as a criterion for distinguishing particular from general judgements, and ‘intelligibility’ rather than determinism as the goal of economic theory. It contrasts this approach with mechanistic conceptions in economics, suggesting anthropinism can better accommodate subjective factors like expectations. The chapter proposes developing a ‘logic of subjectivism’ to codify the domain of subjectivist economic thought, drawing on ideas from Menger and Mises. It introduces the ‘coherence rule’ that questions and answers should use terms from the same domain of thought. Overall, the chapter argues for formulating economic theory in a way that maintains consistency within a subjectivist conceptual framework, rather than mixing subjective and mechanistic elements. This approach is presented as a way to develop more empirically relevant economic analysis while avoiding problematic deterministic assumptions.
This chapter explores the relationship between general economic theories and specific observations, focusing on the connection between general and particular judgements. It traces how economics has approached this issue, from inductivism to hypothesis testing, and argues that positivist methods struggle to define theory-free ‘facts’ for testing. The chapter proposes a ‘reflective attitude’ as an alternative to explanations that claim certain economic concepts, like preferences, are real or fixed. Instead of asserting that these concepts exist as definite entities, reflection focuses on how we understand and use them in analysis. This approach contrasts with deterministic views in economics that treat such concepts as unchanging. The chapter suggests that reflection can clarify how we interpret economic ideas and judgements without requiring commitment to specific claims about their reality. Through examples and logical analysis, it explains this approach and addresses possible misunderstandings, concluding that examining how we think about economic phenomena, rather than claiming what exists, can offer insight into the relationship between economic theory and observed reality. This perspective may also reveal limitations in how neo-classical theory accounts for institutional factors.
Chapter 1 introduces the central theme of examining the relationship between economic theory and observable reality, framed as the connection between the general and the particular. It provides context on mainstream equilibrium models in economics and critiques from schools like Austrian economics. The chapter outlines the approach of tracing relevant philosophical ideas and carefully analysing concepts of ‘fact’ to critique determinism and preference-field theories in economics. This analysis aims to offer a new perspective on Austrian school contentions and make constructive suggestions for economics. The introduction also discusses challenges in studying economic methodology, explains key concepts like metalanguage and units of significance, and provides an overview of major philosophical positions on the general–particular relationship, including realism, nominalism and theory-laden facts. The chapter concludes by outlining the plan for subsequent chapters.
This chapter explores the problem of similarity in the theory of knowledge, tracing its development from ancient Greek philosophy to modern epistemology. It examines how thinkers have grappled with understanding the relationship between general concepts and particular experiences. It reviews philosophical positions, including realism, nominalism, empiricism, rationalism and positivism. It discusses key ideas like Kant’s categories, theory-laden facts and the challenges of defining ‘given’ experiences. The evolution of positivism in economics is analysed, highlighting tensions between nominalist and realist elements. Recent developments in epistemology are covered, including Quine’s holism, conventionalism and Kuhn’s paradigms. The chapter emphasizes how conceptions of knowledge have shifted from seeking correspondence between ideas and external reality to examining the role of human understanding in shaping knowledge. It concludes that while the subjective re-orientation of epistemology faces criticism, it highlights important questions about the nature of objectivity in knowledge. The review provides context for examining the philosophical underpinnings and empirical content of economic theories.
This chapter examines the relationship between the subjective revolution in economics in the 1870s and the broader subjective re-orientation in western philosophy. It analyses how key figures like Jevons, Walras, Pareto and Menger incorporated subjectivism into economic theory. The chapter argues that while Jevons and Walras introduced utility in a mechanistic framework inspired by classical physics, Menger took a distinctly Aristotelian approach focused on understanding economic phenomena through their essential natures. Menger’s method emphasized identifying recurring ‘phenomenal forms’ in economics, like value and price, and deriving exact laws about their relationships. This reflected a subjectivism of the analysing subject, distinct from the subjectivism of economic agents emphasized by later Austrian economists. The chapter traces how Menger’s ideas influenced subsequent Austrian thinkers like Mises, while also noting key differences in their approaches. It concludes that Menger’s subjectivism of the subject has the clearest affinity with the broader philosophical re-orientation towards reflection, but his sharp separation of general and particular knowledge limited his ability to fully resolve the relationship between economic theory and observed facts.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Following on from The Hand Behind the Invisible Hand and A Realist Philosophy of Economics, this new book drawn from Karl Mittermaier’s writings examines the intricate relationship between economic theory and real-world economic experiences.
Despite the centrality of subjectivism in both philosophy and economics, these fields have often overlooked each other’s insights. Mittermaier challenges this disconnect, advocating for a shift from deterministic models to a more reflective approach in economics. He examines the historical, methodological and philosophical dimensions of economic theory, highlighting its struggle to connect economic theory to empirical data and individuals’ lived experiences.
Originally penned between 1979 and 1982 and now published posthumously, this work remains a crucial contribution to contemporary economic discussions.
This chapter develops the sceptic’s conceptual framework as an alternative to the deterministic framework prevalent in economics. The proposed conceptual framework is based on the identification of two separate orders of fact, where the ex post order of facts provides a record of past events, and the ex ante order of facts relates to the structure in the economy and can serve as a guide to action. The ex ante order of facts encompasses causal and structural facts. Determinism requires some empirical regularities, grounding these in the ex post order of facts, under the assumption of the scientific vocation of the impersonal perspective according to which prediction is but explanation – of ex post facts – in the opposite direction. The free will argument used against determinism also fails to draw the distinction between ex post and ex ante facts, since its limiting itself to providing an intelligible account of past events.
This chapter discusses the nature of an economics which does not rely on the concept of a preference field, but which provides for empirical orientation by means of institutions. The notion of consistent choice that finds expression in everyday terms such as a disposition, taste, habit, fashion or custom has the form of an ex ante fact. Provided the notion is not illusory, dispositions, tastes, and so on are therefore independent of particular situations and have a certain invariance, though one would expect them to change from time to time. The proposed abstract model of a genetic explanation consists of (i) explanatory constraints serving as ex ante facts and (ii) explanatory shells for forming ex post facts. If economics is to have empirical content it needs to free itself from a paradox it finds itself in. Choices in general cannot be formulated as ex ante facts. But institutions could be so formulated, though unfortunately economists treat them mostly as ex post facts; either (i) as choices now presented as ex post facts, or (ii) end points of a historical investigation. If formulated as ex ante facts they serve as constraints, but not as constraints on behaviour, instead as constraints on possible explanations.
Economic theory might be expected to position institutions as its empirical content, but the integration of theory and institutional facts has so far not been accomplished in economics. The raison d’être of this book is the opening of a path towards the integration of theory and institutional facts, applying an analytical – rather than historical or evolutionary – approach. This requires a conceptual framework that shows how knowledge of institutions fits into our understanding of economic questions. The conceptual framework relates to the empirical content of economics, identifying two types of facts, distinguishing, for instance, between statistical data, on the one hand, and the relationship that may exist between statistical data, on the other hand. Institutions should figure as facts.
This chapter considers the role which the notion of rational action plays in equilibrium theory. An individual’s choice reveals something about his preferences to the observer and even to the choosing individual himself. The assumption that there is a most preferred combination of goods is merely the assumption that an individual acts purposefully. When we interpret behaviour as purposeful action the beliefs and preferences that are revealed may simply be ones that an individual happened to have at a particular moment, without any significance beyond that moment. When we treat the beliefs, aims and preferences of others as empirical facts, the nature of such facts differs according to whether they are elements in our intelligible accounts of the actions of others or whether they are factors that we take into account in our own actions. They feature as either ex post facts or ex ante facts. In neo-classical economics the empirical content of preferences are ex post facts that have been mistaken for ex ante facts.
