Dr Remco Heesen

This course is available on the MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy, MSc in Philosophy of Economics and the Social Sciences and MSc in Philosophy of Science. This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission.

Students must have completed a university-level introductory course in economics, such as EC1A3 and EC1B3.

Students who have completed a BSc at LSE are not permitted to take this course if they have taken the equivalent course as part of their BSc. If this course is a core course for their chosen MSc programme, they can receive an exception for prior learning, which would allow them to take an alternative course approved by the programme director.

The course will provide philosophical discussion of economic methodology and the foundations of utility theory, with an eye to current debates in economics. We will discuss questions such as the following. What is utility, and how do economists measure it? Does evidence of widespread "irrationality" from behavioural economics undermine standard microeconomic theory? Can idealised models teach us anything about real-world phenomena, and if so, how? How should we measure important economic variables, such as inflation? How do we best find out what interventions work in development? Does macroeconomics need microfoundations? Is the economics profession to blame for its failure to predict the financial crisis?

15 hours of seminars and 15 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

This course is delivered through a combination of seminars and lectures totalling a minimum of 30 hours across Autumn Term.

There is no separate formative assessment, but the essay and continuous assessment, and the feedback received on each, partially serve to help prepare students for the exam.

• Diane Coyle (2010), The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters.
• Dan Hausman (2008), The Philosophy of Economics: An Anthology, 3rd edition.
• José Bermudez (2009), Decision Theory and Rationality.
• Andrew Caplin and Andrew Schotter (2010), The Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics.
• Kevin Hoover (2001), The Methodology of Empirical Macroeconomics.

Exam (50%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period.

Continuous assessment (30%).

Essay (20%, 1500 words).

The precise format, requirements, and any deadlines for continuous assessment will be announced by the course convenor around the time teaching starts. In previous years this has typically consisted of weekly multiple-choice quizzes testing reading comprehension.

The primary purpose of the summative essay is as practice for the exam.