What Do We Mean by Economics Today?

In an effort to emulate the natural sciences, economics attempts to turn general concepts into universal principles to guide human behaviour in a vacuum. By following abstract economic statements, with no input from real life, economics is governed by a vacuous rationality, like the blind intuitions invoked by Kant. We consider three rival notions of economics: formalism (axiomatic); empiricism (technocratic-consequential); and institutionalism (axiological-ideological). While for Robbins, the ends are given, I believe, unlike him, that it is legitimate for economists to recognise that the agents are entitled to deliberate about the ends they seek. As economics is not ethically neutral, integrating the role played by values into economic rationality requires widening the economic analysis. As economics is concerned with social institutions, we claim equity as its first virtue.