Economics and Performativity: Exploring Limits, Theories and Cases (Brisset Nicolas)(Paperback)

Economists do more than merely describe an external economic world. They shape it in the image of their theories and models. This idea, following the philosophy of language, puts forward that economic theories are performative, and not only descriptive.

This idea has become a powerful critique of the scientificity of economics since it removes the idea of an external world against which our description could be evaluated as truth. If any theory can become true, there are no true theories per se because there is no such thing as a pre-existing economy to describe. Is such a relativist stance a fatality? This is the question at stake in this book. Furthermore, the author asks if any theory is able to 'perform' the social reality, or are there actually some limits to performativity? For philosophers, a performative statement is a statement that cannot fail to mean
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