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Model robustness in economics: the admissibility and evaluation of tractability assumptions.

Lisciandra (2017) poses a challenge for robustness analysis (RA) as applied to economic models. She argues that substituting tractability assumptions risks altering the main mathematical structure of the model, thereby preventing the possibility of meaningfully evaluating the same model under differ...

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Published in:Synthese Vol. 200; no. 1; pp. 1 - 24
Main Authors: O’Loughlin, Ryan, Li, Dan
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Feb2022
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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          O’Loughlin, Ryan
          Li, Dan
        affil:
          Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA
          Department of Informatics, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA
      sug:
      keyword:
        Economic models
        Model holism
        Model robustness
        Robustness analysis
        Tractability assumptions
      ab: Lisciandra (2017) poses a challenge for robustness analysis (RA) as applied to economic models. She argues that substituting tractability assumptions risks altering the main mathematical structure of the model, thereby preventing the possibility of meaningfully evaluating the same model under different assumptions. In such cases RA is argued to be inapplicable. However, Lisciandra is mistaken to take the goal of RA as keeping the mathematical properties of tractability assumptions intact. Instead, RA really aims to keep the modeling component while varying the corresponding mathematical formulation. Thus, her argument concerning whether the associated mathematical properties of certain assumptions can be kept intact is irrelevant to the success of RA. Furthermore, we explicate and develop Lloyd’s account of “model robustness” (Lloyd 2015) to provide solutions to Lisciandra’s challenges. Our solutions are, namely, error analysis and independent empirical support. We conclude that although complex economic models do face potential dangers, there are solutions and robustness analysis need not be given up. (157).
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
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    language: English
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