First published in 2001, Causality in Macroeconomics addresses the long-standing problems of causality while taking macroeconomics seriously. The practical concerns of the macroeconomist and abstract concerns of the philosopher inform each other. Grounded in pragmatic realism, the book rejects the popular idea that macroeconomics requires microfoundations, and argues that the macroeconomy is a set of structures that are best analyzed causally. Ideas originally due to Herbert Simon and the Cowles Commission are refined and generalized to non-linear systems, particularly to the non-linear systems with cross-equation restrictions that are ubiquitous in modern macroeconomic models with rational expectations (with and without regime-switching). These ideas help to clarify philosophical as well as economic issues. The structural approach to causality is then used to evaluate more familiar approaches to causality due to Granger, LeRoy and Glymour, Spirtes, Scheines and Kelly, as well as vector autoregressions, the Lucas critique, and the exogeneity concepts of Engle, Hendry and Richard.

"Central banks and other policymaking institutions use causal hypotheses to justify macroeconomic policy decisions to the public and public institutions. These hypotheses say that changes in one macroeconomic aggregate (e.g. aggregate demand) cause changes in other macroeconomic aggregates (e.g. in inflation). An important (perhaps the most important) goal of macroeconomists is to provide conclusive evidence in support of these hypotheses. If they cannot provide any conclusive evidence, then policymaking institutions will be unable to use causal hypotheses to justify policy decisions, and then the scientific objectivity of macroeconomic policy analysis will be questionable. The book analyzes the accounts of causality that have been or can be proposed to capture the type of causality that underlies macroeconomic policy analysis, the empirical methods of causal inference that contemporary macroeconomists have at their disposal, and the conceptions of scientific objectivity that traditionally play a role in economics. The book argues that contemporary macroeconomists cannot provide any conclusive evidence in support of causal hypotheses, and that macroeconomic policy analysis doesn't qualify as scientifically objective in any of the traditional meanings. The book also considers a number of steps that might have to be taken in order for macroeconomic policy analysis to become more objective. The book addresses philosophers of science and economics as well as (macro-) economists, econometricians and statisticians who are interested in causality and macro-econometric methods of causal inference and their wider philosophical and social context"--

Approximately one in six top economic research papers draws an explicitly causal conclusion. But what do economists mean when they conclude that A ‘causes’ B? Does ‘cause’ say that we can influence B by intervening on A, or is it only a label for the correlation of variables? Do quantitative analyses of observational data followed by such causal inferences constitute sufficient grounds for guiding economic policymaking? The Philosophy of Causality in Economics addresses these questions by analyzing the meaning of causal claims made by economists and the philosophical presuppositions underlying the research methods used. The book considers five key causal approaches: the regularity approach, probabilistic theories, counterfactual theories, mechanisms, and interventions and manipulability. Each chapter opens with a summary of literature on the relevant approach and discusses its reception among economists. The text details case studies, and goes on to examine papers which have adopted the approach in order to highlight the methods of causal inference used in contemporary economics. It analyzes the meaning of the causal claim put forward, and finally reconstructs the philosophical presuppositions accepted implicitly by economists. The strengths and limitations of each method of causal inference are also considered in the context of using the results as evidence for policymaking. This book is essential reading to those interested in literature on the philosophy of economics, as well as the philosophy of causality and economic methodology in general.

This volume addresses fundamental issues in the philosophy of science in the context of two most intriguing fields: biology and economics. Written by authorities and experts in the philosophy of biology and economics, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics provides a structured study of the concepts of mechanism and causality in these disciplines and draws careful juxtapositions between philosophical apparatus and scientific practice. By exploring the issues that are most salient to the contemporary philosophies of biology and economics and by presenting comparative analyses, the book serves as a platform not only for gaining mutual understanding between scientists and philosophers of the life sciences and those of the social sciences, but also for sharing interdisciplinary research that combines both philosophical concepts in both fields. The book begins by defining the concepts of mechanism and causality in biology and economics, respectively. The second and third parts investigate philosophical perspectives of various causal and mechanistic issues in scientific practice in the two fields. These two sections include chapters on causal issues in the theory of evolution; experiments and scientific discovery; representation of causal relations and mechanism by models in economics. The concluding section presents interdisciplinary studies of various topics concerning extrapolation of life sciences and social sciences, including chapters on the philosophical investigation of conjoining biological and economic analyses with, respectively, demography, medicine and sociology.

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Economics - Monetary theory and policy, language: English, abstract: Since the main objective of the paper is to test the existence of causality relationship between the three macroeconomic variables, namely real GDP, price level (CPI) and M2 money supply (MS), analysis has been made there by employing 40 years of data. VAR Granger causality test has been made to verify the objective of the paper. The VAR Granger causality test result suggesting the existence of strong and significant correlation between the three variable s pairwise. The direction of causation is found to be a uni- directional causation between money supply and inflation, real GDP and Money supply and between real GDP and inflation and the causation runs from money supply to inflation, real GDP to Money supply and real GDP to inflation respectively. From the causation we observed that money supply has relationship with level of price and economic growth (real GDP). Basically targeting monetary expansion has a multiple role to boost economic growth and control the level of inflation. Keynesians, monetarists, and new classical economists agree that the steady state rate of inflation is closely related to growth of the money supply, and that monetary policy can not affect the equilibrium rate of unemployment. The best slogan of monetarist school of thought "money matters," they argued that changes in the amount of money in the circulation are the sources of other economic changes. In other words, the changes in the size of money supply have a number of implications on the macroeconomics variables especially inflation. Apart from being a powerful instrument of monetary policy, its expansion or contraction dictates the growth in investment and output of any economy. The supply of money is widely accepted as a key determinant of the levels of output and employment in the short run and the level of prices in the long run.

This 1996 work examines the history of debates between Friedman and his critics over money's causal role in business cycles from 1948 to 1991.

In many sciences - physical, but also biology, neuroscience, and other life sciences - one object of reductionism is to purge intentionality from the fundamental basis of both explanations and the explanatory target. The scientifically relevant level - ontologically and epistemologically - is thought to lie deeper than the level of ordinary human interactions. In the material and living world, the more familiar is the less fundamental. In contrast, the economic world of day-to-day life - the world of market interactions - appears to be the relevant level. Macroeconomics is thought to provide an account that is above, not below or behind, ordinary economic decision-making. An advantage of a macroeconomic account is that it is possible to employ causal analysis of the economy as a whole analogous to the causal analysis of physical systems. The fear of many economists is that such analyses are untethered to ordinary economic decision-making. The object of reductionism in economics - the so-called microfoundations of macroeconomics - is adequately to ground or replace higher level causal analysis with an analysis of the day-to-day interactions of people. The object is not to purge intentionality, but to reclaim it. The paper will attempt to understand the key issues surrounding the microfoundations of macroeconomics from a perspectival realist perspective that elucidates the relationship between economists' methodological preference for microfoundations and need for macroeconomic analysis - that is, between economists' respect for the intentional nature of economic life and the need for a causal analysis of the economy. The paper favors metaphysical humility and methodological pragmatism.