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

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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

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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

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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

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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

Talk on “The Philosophy of Science of Financial Economics” at Second Lake Como Summer School on Economic Behaviours: Models, Measurements, and Policies

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In collaboration with Melissa Vergara Fernández (Philosophy, EIPE) and Marta Szymanowska (Finance, RSM). We argue that financial economics should be characterized particularly by its focus on the use of models and by its performative nature. We suggest that the model-based and performative character of financial economics is: (1) visible in the history of its emergence … Read more

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

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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

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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