Three Critical Essays on the Process of Economics Mathematicization

The possibility of the economy becoming more mathematicized began in the late nineteenth century, with the Marginal revolution. According to MIROWSKI (1991), however, the process of mathematicization of economic discourse only became widespread from 1925 onwards. In an attempt to elucidate how and when this process took place in Brazil, we wrote three critical essays on the subject. The goal of the first essay is afford Brazilian students and researchers easier access to a discussion that is somewhat disperse in our country, and also to encourage further research on the subject. We begin the second essay by presenting the main benefits of the mathematicization of economics, as argued by some of the advocates of the progress of the mathematical formalization of economic discourse. After that, we point out the more traditional criticisms to this mathematicization process. In our third essay, we check how mathematical formalization in economics advanced in Brazil in the last three decades. To this end, we categorize every article published in three of Brazil s main economics journals from 1981 to 2010, according to the type of argument used. The total of articles analyzed was 5,733.

Autorentext

I am a professor of economics since 2002. My research area is linked to the history of economic thought, methodology of economics and I am currently participating in research on economic development. Today I am a researcher at the group New Developmentism and Social Democracy (NODDES) of Getúlio Vargas Foundation, located in São Paulo, Brazil .