The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy Essays in Positive Economics Part I -The Methodology of Positive Economics *

Abstract

This paper is concerned primarily with certain methodological problems that arise inconstructing the “distinct positive science” Keynes called for - in particular, the problem how todecide whether a suggested hypothesis or theory should be tentatively accepted as part of the“body of systematized knowledge concerning what is.” But the confusion Keynes laments is stillso rife and so much of a hindrance to the recognition that economics can be, and in part is, apositive science that it seems well to preface the main body of the paper with a few remarks aboutthe relation between positive and normative economics.