Blogpost “Passive investing: the trillion-dollar trend pioneered by Nobel Prize-winning financial economists”

Financial economists created the impetus for passive investing, which is now a trillion-dollar industry. In a recently published article in the European Journal of Philosophy of Science on this topic we analysed how exactly the models created by financial economists helped design the world of index funds and ETFs that forms the massive trillion-dollar industry of passive … Read more

Article “Contextualist model evaluation: models in financial economics and index funds” in European Journal for Philosophy of Science

Abstract. Philosophers of science typically focus on the epistemic performance of scientific models when evaluating them. Analysing the effects that models may have on the world has typically been the purview of sociologists of science. We argue that the reactive (or “performative”) effects of models should also figure in model evaluations by philosophers of science. … Read more

Article “Describing model relations: The case of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) family in financial economics” in Studies in History & Philosophy of Science

Abstract: The description of how individual models in families of models are related to each other is crucial for the general philosophical understanding of model-based scientific practice. We focus on the Capital Asset Pricing Models (CAPM) family, a cornerstone in financial economics, to provide a descriptive analysis of model relations within a family. We introduce … Read more

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Economics

The blossoming research field “philosophy of economics” has a new resource: the “Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Economics”. It is co-edited by Conrad Heilmann (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Julian Reiss (Johannes Kepler University Linz). A new resource for philosophy of economics The Handbook captures the most important topics and recent trends in the field “philosophy … Read more

Blogpost “No envy: a Nobel economist as a forerunner on fairness”

The rich legacy of EUR economist Jan Tinbergen needs updating. Besides a Nobel Prize in economics, having founded Dutch and international organisations, being active in policymaking and economic development, and having published influential works especially on econometrics, there is also this: Tinbergen has formulated the “no envy” fairness principle already in 1930, decades earlier than previously … Read more

Article “Liberal political equality does not imply proportional representation” in Social Choice and Welfare

In their article ‘Liberal political equality implies proportional representation’, which was published in Social Choice and Welfare 33(4):617–627 in 2009, Eliora van der Hout and Anthony J. McGann claim that any seat-allocation rule that satisfies certain ‘Liberal axioms’ produces results essentially equivalent to proportional representation. We show that their claim and its proof are wanting. Firstly, the … Read more

Chapter in Routledge Handbook: “Fairness and Fair Division”

Our chapter “Fairness and Fair Division” is forthcoming in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Economics Abstract. Fairness is important concept in Western philosophy and in economics alike. We review the so-called fair division theories in philosophy and economics that explore fairness as a distinct value concept. Philosophers build on John Broome’s influential account of … Read more

Translation of Jan Tinbergen’s article “Mathematical Psychology” in Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics

‘Mathematical psychics’ was the name of the approach and the book by Edgeworth for a burgeoning scientific approach, also pioneered by Pareto, for that part of psychology on which economics rests. The nature of the subject of this approach raises the prospect that this approach can also be of interest to practitioners of other sciences … Read more

Article “No Envy: Jan Tinbergen on Fairness” in Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics

The important ‘no-envy’ fairness criterion has typically been attributed to Foley (1967) and sometimes to Tinbergen (1946, 1953). We reveal that Jan Tinbergen introduced ‘no-envy’ as a fairness criterion in his article “Mathematiese Psychologie” published in 1930 in the Dutch journal Mens en Maatschappij and translated as “Mathematical Psychology” in 2021 in the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and … Read more

Fairness as proportional satisfaction of claims

A short text on the very idea of fairness as proportional satisfaction of claims appeared (in Dutch) in the Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte: S. Wintein & C. Heilmann (2020). Eerlijkheid: het proportionele-claims idee. Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte, 112 (4), 494-498.