Between realism and abstraction: a methodological assessment of macroeconomics

Abstract

This paper states how modern macroeconomics is made up by a wide range of modes of thought which fortify the debate and allow the progress of science. However, this methodological plurality has been annulled by the dominance of the mainstream approach that has driven the scientific progress in the wrong way, seeking more logical and mathematical consistency, which leaves the explanatory power of the model to its minimum expression. This paper shows that this inability has arisen in a growing dissatisfaction on the usefulness of macroeconomic theory. Moreover, diversity of thought in macroeconomics is shown, as well as its advance as science comparing the mainstream approach with post Keynesian one, finding serious methodological differences which are become evident in the feedback degree between theory and reality what affects its practical relevance. As a conclusion we may say that the dominance of mainstream has prevented macroeconomics from making progress as it has invalidated the debates showing a single scientific path, what has led to the omission of different approaches that might challenge and expand the research questions, the relevant variables and its causality relations, the use of mathematics.