Title: Backhouse and Medema on the definition of economics: some critical observations

Authors: Khandakar Q. Elahi

Addresses: Agricultural Finance, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Bangladesh

Abstract: This paper critically reviews Professors Backhouse and Medema's article - 'On the definition of economics' - published in the Journal of Economic Perspective (2009), which offers a state-of-art survey of the century-old definitional debate. Unlike other similar articles, BM makes some novel (and eye-brow-raising) conclusions: 1) modern economists do not subscribe to a homogeneous definition of their subject; 2) this disagreement does not necessarily pose a problem; 3) different authors use different definitions to direct the way they want the subject to move and influence its practice. I argue that their statements are linguistically and epistemologically weak and that they have failed to substantiate their claims.

Keywords: Backhouse and Medema; economics definition; homogeneous definition; material welfare; scarcity and choice; the boundary of economics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPEE.2022.131145

International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 2022 Vol.13 No.4, pp.359 - 381

Received: 22 Feb 2022
Accepted: 29 Oct 2022
Published online: 31 May 2023 *

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