The method of scientific abstraction. The method of scientific abstraction in economics

The economy is considered to be one of the oldest sciences. Even primitive people possessed basic knowledge in this area: they had a definite idea of the principles of farming, of the developing relations between all members of the community in the process of producing and distributing goods and exchanging the products received. However, these representations did not unite into an independent field of knowledge.

History of Economic Theory

The emergence of economic thought is characterized by the preindustrial (agrarian) period of social development and embraces such ancient civilizations as the Roman Empire, Greece, etc. (4th millennium BC - V century AD). It was closely intertwined in this era with religious ideology and political and legal views.

Written economic images of thoughts were expressed mainly by problems of functioning, as well as rational organization of economic and labor activity, the system of public administration and responsibility for property. These letters were: codes of laws, texts of the Old and New Testament, various treaties, social and philosophical treatises of individuals.

A further evolution of the economic outlook took place in medieval times: Western Europe - V-XVIII centuries, including bourgeois revolutions, Russia - IX-XIX centuries, more precisely, before the reform of 1861. This era is associated with emerging views on the problems of class status, distribution Income, land ownership, corporate-type relationships (city communes, merchant guilds, neighborhood communities, craft shops, knights and monastic orders, etc.). Political power belonged to secular and ecclesiastical feudal lords (landowners), significant positions were given to traditions, in addition, the religious worldview reigned.

At that time, interest was beginning to manifest, aimed at commodity-money relations. The main theorists were scholastics, and economic ideas were borrowed mainly from heresies, for example equality, the condemnation of the sale of indulgences, the duty to work, and so on.

In the conditions of the emergence of capitalist relations and the disintegration of feudalism, the first school of economic etiology, mercantilism (XV-XVIII centuries), is born. So, this period is characterized by the perception of economic theory as an independent science in view of the emergence of the first system of economic views, the central place in which the problem of wealth rests.

Economic theory: definition, guidelines and sections

It acts as a discipline of economic science and represents its philosophical and theoretical basis, consisting of many directions and schools. Economic theory, the definition of which was presented above, can be supplemented by the fact that it is, first of all, the science of the process of conscious choice by people and society of the method of applying scarce resources that have a multi-purpose purpose.

Economic theory includes a number of sections:

• Methodology of economic science;
• microeconomics;
• macroeconomics;
• International economy;
• Econometrics;
• game theory.

At present, the following scientific schools and areas of economic theory can be distinguished:

• Neo-Keynesianism;
• A new institutional economic theory;
• monetarism;
• Neuroeconomics;
• New political economy;
• Austrian school;
• Economy and law.

What is the subject of the science in question?

Several answers serve as an answer to this question. Thus, economic theory studies:

1. Activities related to exchange processes and commercial transactions that are carried out between people.

2. Everyday business activity of people, as well as the reproduction and distribution of the means necessary for their existence.

3. Behavioral characteristics of a person and a group of people in the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods.

4. The ability of mankind to cope with the emerging challenges in the production and consumption.

5. Wealth as a result of human relationships.

6. Laws governing the production, exchange of material goods at the relevant stages of the evolution of society (Engels).

7. Wealth and incentives that act as impulses to the active human activity, as well as the motives for their counteraction (A. Marshall) and other interpretations of what economic theory is studying.

The neo-Keynesian theory of economic growth

This doctrine applies to the post-war period. Objective prerequisite for its emergence are the processes that were taking place within the framework of the world economy at the end of the 20th century. To them it is possible to carry:

1. Deployment of STR.
2. A significant increase in the growth rate of the economy in the socialist countries.
3. Unevenness in the development of capitalist countries, etc.

The above processes highlighted the task of accelerating growth rates and led to the emergence of several theories of economic growth, in which the authors were aimed at elucidating the general factors of this process.

The theory of R. Harrod (England) and E. Domar (USA) was singled out, based on the conclusion that the sustainable rate of economic growth is acceptable as a prerequisite for a dynamic state of equilibrium in the economy that allows full consumption of both productive capacities and labor resources.

Another position of the Harrod-Domar model is recognition of the premise of constant parameters: the average index of investment efficiency and the share of savings in total revenues.

The third general provision was the statement that it is possible to achieve constant growth and dynamic balance through active state intervention in the economy.

The authors concluded: given the stable capital output and the rate of accumulation, the rate of growth of the national income ("guaranteed growth rate") will also be stable. The difficulty of securing this equilibrium within the framework of the market element was obvious, namely, the absence of automatic factors that would facilitate the early restoration of the previously disturbed equilibrium.

An essential shortcoming of this neo-Keynesian model is Harrod and Domar's disregard of the social and economic structure of the existing capitalist society, which directly affects the dynamics of macroeconomic indicators.

New institutional economic theory

She studies the behavior of economic objects. This is another new direction, which is part of the basic economic theory. The emerging interest in the institutional model is associated with attempts aimed at overcoming a number of prerequisites that are characteristic of neoclassicism (perfect competition, the axiom of complete rationality, the establishment of an equilibrium state with the help of a price mechanism), with the analysis of economic processes in a complex, with the emerging need for investigating new phenomena, Conjugated with STR.

The positions of the model under consideration

First, institutions are represented by the behavior of economic agents.

Secondly, they are considered from the point of view of their influence on the decisions taken by economic agents.

Thirdly, many objects were not associated with the "black boxes", that is, the organization (state, households, firms) is perceived as a system with an internal structure of interests.

Fourth, comparison of institutional alternatives among themselves, and not only with the ideal version of things.

Fifth, a more global approach to determining the choice-of-choice situation within an institutional model, which allows us to relax the limitations on the comparative statics method.

Sixthly, this direction is aimed at bringing the economic approach to uniformity.

The most important method of scientific knowledge

They are the method of scientific abstraction. In economics, it is represented by the purification of the study of the object from temporary and random factors, as well as the definition of typical, purely individual and permanent features.

Economic phenomena do not lend themselves to investigation by means of material instruments, therefore, abstraction is used as the main method of their study, or, more precisely, abstraction from all factors that do not correspond to the nature of the object under study.

It may seem that scientific abstraction leads away from the real economic significance of the analyzed object. However, this is fundamentally the wrong conclusion. On the contrary, it brings to its true manifestations, hiding behind a pile of numerous external events and phenomena.

The role of this method in economic analysis

It consists in simplifying the process of studying the economic phenomenon. The method of scientific abstraction assumes that all other events, except those that are studied at this stage, remain unchanged.

Generalization, in fact, is an abstraction and deliberate simplification. Thus, scientific abstraction is interpreted as highlighting the most significant aspects of the phenomenon under investigation and avoiding everything incidental and secondary.

The main techniques of the method in question

In economic theory, researchers widely use, as already mentioned, the method of scientific abstraction, which has two main ways by which it is realized: deduction and induction.

They act as complementary rather than opposing methods of research. The hypotheses formulated on their basis are for the economist a kind of reference point in the process of collecting empirical data. A variety of views about certain facts and the world as a whole are a prerequisite for further substantive judgments.

The essence of these techniques

As already mentioned, the method of scientific abstraction in the economy is represented by two methods. So, induction (guidance) is a method of inference, which is based on the generalization of certain facts. Through this technique, the so-called transition from the study of particular (single) phenomena to general conclusions and positions is provided.

Also, the method of scientific abstraction involves such a method of investigating an object as deduction (derivation) - reasoning, by means of which the hypothesis is verified by real facts. This method makes it possible to move from general conclusions to private ones.

The method of scientific abstraction, expressed by abstract thinking, allows us to gradually reveal the essence of economic phenomena. For this, it is required to form certain logical concepts that reflect in full the true economic reality.