CriticalThinkingAcademy

Table of Contents Explanation vs model Economists vs The Public Systems and Complexity Explanations Summarizing the Explanation Series In the first two posts, we discussed criteria for "good explanations" in general; with particular emphasis on mechanism and causal structures. In this post, I want to turn to a specific type of explanation. It’s often correctly asserted that microeconomic theory often fails to explain economic behavior, for a variety of reasons: incorrect unit of analysis, incorrect assumptions about structure, unrealistic assumptions about human rationality etc. But from an economists perspective, this is not necessarily a failure. The standard microeconomic model serves as a benchmark for comparison, we understand that it doesn’t capture important aspects of reality and adjust the model accordingly. But this has got me thinking about explanation and the relationship between exp...