This paper provides the first systematic epistemological account of simulated data in empirical s... more This paper provides the first systematic epistemological account of simulated data in empirical science. We focus on the epistemic issues modelers face when they generate simulated data to solve problems with empirical datasets, research tools, or experiments. We argue that for simulated data to count as epistemically reliable, a simulation model does not have to mimic its target. Instead, some models take empirical data as a target, and simulated data may successfully mimic such a target even if the model does not. We show how to distinguish between simulated and empirical data, and we also offer a definition of simulation that can accommodate Monte Carlo models. We shed light on the epistemology of simulated data by providing a taxonomy of four different mimicking relations that differ concerning the nature of the relation or relata. We illustrate mimicking relations with examples from different sciences. Our main claim is that the epistemic evaluation of simulated data should sta...
ABSTRACT A review of Donald Katzner's book on economic modelling is provided. In addition to ... more ABSTRACT A review of Donald Katzner's book on economic modelling is provided. In addition to characterising the book, I give critical comments on the distinction between primary and secondary assumptions.
This paper studies the welfare consequences of strategic voting in Borda rule by comparing the ut... more This paper studies the welfare consequences of strategic voting in Borda rule by comparing the utilitarian efficiencies in simulated voting games under two behavioural assumptions: expected utility maximising behaviour and sincere behaviour. Utilitarian efficiency is higher with expected utility maximising behaviour than with sincere voting behaviour. Strategic voting increases utilitarian efficiency particularly if the distribution of preference intensities correlates with voter types and if the voters have at least some aggregate level information on preference intensities. Borda rule is shown to have two advantages related to strategic voting. Strategic voting is beneficial in this rule even if some but not all voter types engage in strategic behaviour and strategic voting is beneficial even if the voters’ information is based on unreliable signals if those signals contain some intensity information. (JEL classification numbers: D71, D81)
Derivational robustness may increase the degree to which various pieces of evidence indirectly co... more Derivational robustness may increase the degree to which various pieces of evidence indirectly confirm a robust result. There are two ways in which this increase may come about. First, if one can show that a result is robust, and that the various individual models used to derive it also have other confirmed results, these other results may indirectly confirm the robust result. Confirmation derives from the fact that data not known to bear on a result are shown to be relevant when it is shown to be robust. Second, robustness may increase the degree to which the robust result is indirectly confirmed if it increases the weight with which existing evidence indirectly confirms it. This may happen when it strengthens the connection between the core and the robust result by showing that auxiliaries are not responsible for the result.
Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) has been under criticism for decades fo... more Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) has been under criticism for decades for not taking account of preference intensities. Computer-simulation results by Aki Lehtinen concerning strategic voting under various voting rules show that this intensity argument does not need to rest on mere intuition. Voters may express intensities by voting strategically, and that this has beneficial aggregate-level consequences: utilitarian efficiency is higher if voters engage in strategic behaviour than if they always vote sincerely. Strategic voting is thus unambiguously beneficial under a utilitarian evaluation of outcomes. What has been considered the main argument for IIA turns out to be one against it. This paper assesses the implications of these results for interpretations of Arrow's theorem and the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem in a discussion on the methodological and philosophical arguments concerning preference intensities and IIA.
This paper argues that some parts of voting theory are inherently untestable. Theories which pred... more This paper argues that some parts of voting theory are inherently untestable. Theories which predict that an outcome of voting will be one that has a certain relation to individual preferences are particularly difficult to test because an empirical test requires information on those in-dividual preferences, and such information is not available. This problem is particularly difficult in voting theory because the holism of the mental is particularly severe in this context.
There are two different ways of interpreting the idea that payoffs in games are revealed preferen... more There are two different ways of interpreting the idea that payoffs in games are revealed preferences. One could argue, first, that choices define payoffs in the sense that preferences and choices are conceptually tied to each other, and secondly, that there is an experimental procedure that could be used for finding out players' payoffs. It will be shown that, in game theory, the first interpretation is conceptually impossible and the second is misleading. It is thus argued that payoffs in games should be interpreted as representations of players' preferences rather than revealed preferences. It is also shown that, whereas it is reasonable to assume that players choose the non-cooperative strategy in a Prisoner's Dilemma game because the argument for choosing strongly dominant strategies is compelling, a revealedpreference argument does not support such a choice.
This paper studies the welfare consequences of strategic voting in two commonly used parliamentar... more This paper studies the welfare consequences of strategic voting in two commonly used parliamentary agendas by comparing the average utilities obtained in simulated voting under two behavioural assumptions: expected utility maximising behaviour and sincere behaviour. The average utility obtained in simulations is higher with expected utility maximising behaviour than with sincere voting behaviour under a broad range of assumptions. Strategic voting increases welfare particularly if the distribution of preference intensities correlates with voter types.
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2010
ABSTRACT We claim that the process of theoretical model refinement in economics is best character... more ABSTRACT We claim that the process of theoretical model refinement in economics is best characterised as robustness analysis: the systematic examination of the robustness of modelling results with respect to particular modelling assumptions. We argue that this practise has epistemic value by extending William Wimsatt's account of robustness analysis as triangulation via independent means of determination. For economists robustness analysis is a crucial methodological strategy because their models are often based on idealisations and abstractions, and it is usually difficult to tell which idealisations are truly harmful.
The most common argument against the use of rational choice models outside economics is that they... more The most common argument against the use of rational choice models outside economics is that they make unrealistic assumptions about individual behavior. We argue that whether the falsity of assumptions matters in a given model depends on which factors are explanatorily relevant. Since the explanatory factors may vary from application to application, effective criticism of economic model building should be based on model-specific arguments showing how the result really depends on the false assumptions. However, some modeling results in imperialistic applications are relatively robust with respect to unrealistic assumptions.
Political science and economic science . . . make use of the same language, the same mode of abst... more Political science and economic science . . . make use of the same language, the same mode of abstraction, the same instruments of thought and the same method of reasoning. (Black 1998, 354) Proponents as well as opponents of economics imperialism agree that imperialism is a matter of unification; providing a unified framework for social scientific analysis. Uskali Mäki distinguishes between derivational and ontological unification and argues that the latter should serve as a constraint for the former. We explore whether, in the case of rational-choice political science, self-interested behavior can be seen as a common causal element and solution concepts as the common derivational element, and whether the former constraints the use of the latter. We find that this is not the case. Instead, what is common to economics and rational-choice political science is a set of research heuristics and a focus on institutions with similar structures and forms of organization.
This paper provides the first systematic epistemological account of simulated data in empirical s... more This paper provides the first systematic epistemological account of simulated data in empirical science. We focus on the epistemic issues modelers face when they generate simulated data to solve problems with empirical datasets, research tools, or experiments. We argue that for simulated data to count as epistemically reliable, a simulation model does not have to mimic its target. Instead, some models take empirical data as a target, and simulated data may successfully mimic such a target even if the model does not. We show how to distinguish between simulated and empirical data, and we also offer a definition of simulation that can accommodate Monte Carlo models. We shed light on the epistemology of simulated data by providing a taxonomy of four different mimicking relations that differ concerning the nature of the relation or relata. We illustrate mimicking relations with examples from different sciences. Our main claim is that the epistemic evaluation of simulated data should sta...
ABSTRACT A review of Donald Katzner's book on economic modelling is provided. In addition to ... more ABSTRACT A review of Donald Katzner's book on economic modelling is provided. In addition to characterising the book, I give critical comments on the distinction between primary and secondary assumptions.
This paper studies the welfare consequences of strategic voting in Borda rule by comparing the ut... more This paper studies the welfare consequences of strategic voting in Borda rule by comparing the utilitarian efficiencies in simulated voting games under two behavioural assumptions: expected utility maximising behaviour and sincere behaviour. Utilitarian efficiency is higher with expected utility maximising behaviour than with sincere voting behaviour. Strategic voting increases utilitarian efficiency particularly if the distribution of preference intensities correlates with voter types and if the voters have at least some aggregate level information on preference intensities. Borda rule is shown to have two advantages related to strategic voting. Strategic voting is beneficial in this rule even if some but not all voter types engage in strategic behaviour and strategic voting is beneficial even if the voters’ information is based on unreliable signals if those signals contain some intensity information. (JEL classification numbers: D71, D81)
Derivational robustness may increase the degree to which various pieces of evidence indirectly co... more Derivational robustness may increase the degree to which various pieces of evidence indirectly confirm a robust result. There are two ways in which this increase may come about. First, if one can show that a result is robust, and that the various individual models used to derive it also have other confirmed results, these other results may indirectly confirm the robust result. Confirmation derives from the fact that data not known to bear on a result are shown to be relevant when it is shown to be robust. Second, robustness may increase the degree to which the robust result is indirectly confirmed if it increases the weight with which existing evidence indirectly confirms it. This may happen when it strengthens the connection between the core and the robust result by showing that auxiliaries are not responsible for the result.
Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) has been under criticism for decades fo... more Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) has been under criticism for decades for not taking account of preference intensities. Computer-simulation results by Aki Lehtinen concerning strategic voting under various voting rules show that this intensity argument does not need to rest on mere intuition. Voters may express intensities by voting strategically, and that this has beneficial aggregate-level consequences: utilitarian efficiency is higher if voters engage in strategic behaviour than if they always vote sincerely. Strategic voting is thus unambiguously beneficial under a utilitarian evaluation of outcomes. What has been considered the main argument for IIA turns out to be one against it. This paper assesses the implications of these results for interpretations of Arrow's theorem and the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem in a discussion on the methodological and philosophical arguments concerning preference intensities and IIA.
This paper argues that some parts of voting theory are inherently untestable. Theories which pred... more This paper argues that some parts of voting theory are inherently untestable. Theories which predict that an outcome of voting will be one that has a certain relation to individual preferences are particularly difficult to test because an empirical test requires information on those in-dividual preferences, and such information is not available. This problem is particularly difficult in voting theory because the holism of the mental is particularly severe in this context.
There are two different ways of interpreting the idea that payoffs in games are revealed preferen... more There are two different ways of interpreting the idea that payoffs in games are revealed preferences. One could argue, first, that choices define payoffs in the sense that preferences and choices are conceptually tied to each other, and secondly, that there is an experimental procedure that could be used for finding out players' payoffs. It will be shown that, in game theory, the first interpretation is conceptually impossible and the second is misleading. It is thus argued that payoffs in games should be interpreted as representations of players' preferences rather than revealed preferences. It is also shown that, whereas it is reasonable to assume that players choose the non-cooperative strategy in a Prisoner's Dilemma game because the argument for choosing strongly dominant strategies is compelling, a revealedpreference argument does not support such a choice.
This paper studies the welfare consequences of strategic voting in two commonly used parliamentar... more This paper studies the welfare consequences of strategic voting in two commonly used parliamentary agendas by comparing the average utilities obtained in simulated voting under two behavioural assumptions: expected utility maximising behaviour and sincere behaviour. The average utility obtained in simulations is higher with expected utility maximising behaviour than with sincere voting behaviour under a broad range of assumptions. Strategic voting increases welfare particularly if the distribution of preference intensities correlates with voter types.
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2010
ABSTRACT We claim that the process of theoretical model refinement in economics is best character... more ABSTRACT We claim that the process of theoretical model refinement in economics is best characterised as robustness analysis: the systematic examination of the robustness of modelling results with respect to particular modelling assumptions. We argue that this practise has epistemic value by extending William Wimsatt's account of robustness analysis as triangulation via independent means of determination. For economists robustness analysis is a crucial methodological strategy because their models are often based on idealisations and abstractions, and it is usually difficult to tell which idealisations are truly harmful.
The most common argument against the use of rational choice models outside economics is that they... more The most common argument against the use of rational choice models outside economics is that they make unrealistic assumptions about individual behavior. We argue that whether the falsity of assumptions matters in a given model depends on which factors are explanatorily relevant. Since the explanatory factors may vary from application to application, effective criticism of economic model building should be based on model-specific arguments showing how the result really depends on the false assumptions. However, some modeling results in imperialistic applications are relatively robust with respect to unrealistic assumptions.
Political science and economic science . . . make use of the same language, the same mode of abst... more Political science and economic science . . . make use of the same language, the same mode of abstraction, the same instruments of thought and the same method of reasoning. (Black 1998, 354) Proponents as well as opponents of economics imperialism agree that imperialism is a matter of unification; providing a unified framework for social scientific analysis. Uskali Mäki distinguishes between derivational and ontological unification and argues that the latter should serve as a constraint for the former. We explore whether, in the case of rational-choice political science, self-interested behavior can be seen as a common causal element and solution concepts as the common derivational element, and whether the former constraints the use of the latter. We find that this is not the case. Instead, what is common to economics and rational-choice political science is a set of research heuristics and a focus on institutions with similar structures and forms of organization.
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Papers by Aki Lehtinen