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Dive into the research topics where Ivan Moscati is active.

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Featured researches published by Ivan Moscati.


History of Political Economy | 2013

Were Jevons, Menger, and Walras Really Cardinalists? On the Notion of Measurement in Utility Theory, Psychology, Mathematics, and Other Disciplines, 1870-1910

Ivan Moscati

The paper argues that the canonical dichotomy between cardinal utility and ordinal utility is inadequate to tell the history of utility theory, and that a third form of utility consistent with the so-called classical understanding of measurement should be added to the traditional picture. According to the classical view, measuring an object consists of assessing the numerical ratio between the object and some other object taken as a unit. In particular, the paper shows that Jevons, Menger and Walras understood measurement in the classical sense, applied this understanding to utility measurement, and therefore were not cardinalists in the current sense of the term associated with the ranking of utility differences. The paper also analyzes the argumentative strategies adopted by Jevons and Walras to address the conflict between the scientific importance they attributed to measurement, their classical understanding of it, and the apparent immeasurability of the utility featuring in their economic theories. Finally, in order to appreciate the broad intellectual context within which their discussions on utility measurement took place, the paper reviews the understanding of measurement in disciplines that bear some relation to utility theory. This review illustrates that in the years 1870-1910, the period in which Jevons, Menger and Walras were active, the classical understanding of measurement dominated not only utility theory but also all other disciplines surveyed. This circumstance helps to explain why the three marginalists remained committed to the classical understanding even though it did not square with their economic practices.


Journal of The History of Economic Thought | 2008

MORE ECONOMICS, PLEASE: WE'RE HISTORIANS OF ECONOMICS

Ivan Moscati

I. INTRODUCTION I believe that the history of economic thought (HET) should maintain a strong connection, both theoretically and academically, with economics. I argue this along two dimensions. The first one can be labeled as disciplinary and regards what I call the ‘‘HET-as-science-studies program,’’ which has become quite influential in our sub-discipline during the last few years. I deem that this program is not a winning strategy for our field, and in Section II I criticize it from several angles. Among other things, I provide data about the academic affiliation of young HET scholars that support my case. My second argument is pedagogical: I think that future HET scholars should have a good background in mainstream economics, and I explain why in Section III.


Journal of Economic Methodology | 2011

Becker random behavior and the as-if defense of rational choice theory in demand analysis

Ivan Moscati; Paola Tubaro

In discussing rational choice theory (RCT) as an explanation of demand behavior, Becker (1962, Journal of Political Economy, 70, 1–13) proposed a model of random choice in which consumers pick a bundle on their budget line according to a uniform distribution. This model has then been used in various ways to assess the validity of RCT and to support as-if arguments in defense of it. This paper makes both historical and methodological contributions. Historically, it investigates how the interpretation of Becker random behavior evolved between the original 1962 article and the modern experimental literature on individual demand, and surveys six experiments in which it has been used as an alternative hypothesis to RCT. Methodologically, this paper conducts an assessment of the as-if defense of RCT from the standpoint of Beckers model. It argues that this defense is ‘weak’ in a number of senses, and that it has negatively influenced the design of experiments about RCT.


Journal of The History of Economic Thought | 2005

W. E. Johnson's 1913 Paper and the Question of his Knowledge of Pareto

Ivan Moscati

In 1913, the Cambridge logician W.E. Johnson published a famous article on demand theory in the Economic Journal. Although Johnson’s treatment of the subject strongly resembles the analysis set forth by Pareto in the Manual of Political Economy, Johnson does not cite the Italian economist. This has aroused a long-standing debate about Johnson’s actual acquaintance with Pareto’s works, but the debated point has never been thoroughly investigated. The present paper addresses the question of Johnson’s knowledgeof Pareto both from an analytical and historical viewpoint, by examining Johnson’s life in the Cambridge environment and his available unpublished papers. Even though the new evidence gathered gives some weight to the thesis that Johnson could not have been unaware of Pareto’s Manual, it cannot exclude the possibility that the logician wrote his paper autonomously.


History of Political Economy | 2016

Measuring the Economizing Mind in the 1940s and 1950s. The Mosteller-Nogee and Davidson-Suppes-Siegel Experiments to Measure the Utility of Money

Ivan Moscati

The paper studies the origin, content and impact of two experiments to measure the utility of money, namely that performed by Mosteller and Nogee in 1948-1949 and the one carried out by Davidson, Suppes, and Siegel in 1954. Both experiments relied on expected utility theory (EUT), and both groups of experimenters concluded that their findings supported the measurability of utility as well as EUT. The two experiments illuminate the interaction between economics and psychology in the 1940s and 1950s in a number of ways. First, their designs exhibit a tension between the economic image of human agency associated with EUT, and insights from experimental psychology research at odds with EUT. Second, both experiments were performed by psychologists and other non-economists, and the paper reconstructs how their authors became interested in measuring an archetypal economic object such as the utility of money. Finally, the paper shows that the psychological insights shaping the two experiments found some further application between 1955 and 1965, but were quickly forgotten afterwards. Only in the 1970s, when robust experimental evidence against EUT accumulated, were economists compelled to re-consider those psychological insights.


Journal of Economic Methodology | 2014

Introduction: methodologies of bounded rationality

Till Grüne-Yanoff; Caterina Marchionni; Ivan Moscati

The modelling of bounded rationality is currently pursued by approaches that exhibit a wide diversity of methodologies. This special issue collects five contributions that discuss different methodological aspects of these approaches. In our introduction, we map the variety of methodological positions with respect to three questions. First, what kinds of evidence do the respective approaches consider relevant for modelling bounded rationality? Second, what kind of modelling desiderata do the respective approaches focus on? And third, how do the respective approaches justify the normative validity of bounded rationality? To broaden the picture, we not only discusss the five contributions of this issue, but also include relevant positions from the extant literature.


Archive | 2013

Austrian Debates on Utility Measurement from Menger to Hayek

Ivan Moscati

This paper examines how some of the main exponents of the Austrian school of economics addressed the issues related to the measurability of utility. The first part is devoted to the period before World War I. During this period, Menger and Wieser treated de facto utilities as if they were measurable and could be expressed as multiples of a utility unit, Bohm-Bawerk and the young Schumpeter defended explicitly the measurability of utility, while, in contrast to these views, Cuhel and Mises argued that utilities cannot be measured but only ranked. After World War I, the ordinal view became the dominant one among Austrian economists but they admitted that individuals are not only able to rank the utility of goods (as in the ordinal approach), but are also capable of ranking differences of utility. The second part of the paper reconstructs the interwar discussions on the ranking of utility differences, focusing on the contributions of Schonfeld, Rosenstein-Rodan, Morgenstern and Alt. The paper concludes by illustrating Hayek’s ordinal view of utility.


Archive | 2009

INTERACTIVE AND COMMON KNOWLEDGE IN THE STATE-SPACE MODEL

Ivan Moscati

This paper deals with the prevailing formal model for knowledge in contemporary economics, namely the state-space model introduced by Robert Aumann in 1976. In particular, the paper addresses the following question arising in this formalism: in order to state that an event is interactively or commonly known among a group of agents, do we need to assume that each of them knows how the information is imparted to the others? Aumann answered in the negative, but his arguments apply only to canonical, i.e., completely specified state spaces, while in most applications the state space is not canonical. This paper addresses the same question along original lines, demonstrating that the answer is negative for both canonical and not-canonical state spaces. Further, it shows that this result ensues from two counterintuitive properties held by knowledge in the state-space model, namely Substitutivity and Monotonicity.


LSE Research Online Documents on Economics | 2006

Epistemic Virtues and Theory Choice in Economics

Ivan Moscati

When economists have to choose between competing theories, they evaluate not only the theories’ empirical relevance, but also qualities like their simplicity, tractability, parsimony and unifying power. These are called the epistemic virtues of a theory. The present paper proposes a formal definition for some epistemic virtues and investigates their role for theory choice in economics.


Journal of Economic Methodology | 2016

Measurement Theory and Utility Analysis in Suppes’ Early Work, 1951–1958

Ivan Moscati

The paper reconstructs the connections between the evolution of Patrick Suppes’ measurement theory from 1951 to 1958 and the research in utility analysis he conducted between 1953 and 1957 within the Stanford Value Theory Project. In particular, the paper shows that Suppes’ superseding of the classical understanding of measurement, his endorsement of the representational view of measurement, and his conceiving of an axiomatic version of the latter were prompted by his research in utility analysis.

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Paola Tubaro

University of Greenwich

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Chen Li

Erasmus University Rotterdam

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Han Bleichrodt

Erasmus University Rotterdam

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Peter P. Wakker

Erasmus University Rotterdam

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Till Grüne-Yanoff

Royal Institute of Technology

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Paola Tubaro

University of Greenwich

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