Knowledge We Have Lost in Information: The History of Information in Modern Economics

Information is a central concept in economics, and The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information explores its treatment in modern economics. The study of information, far from offering enlightenment, resulted in all matter of confusion for economists and the public.

Philip Mirowski and Edward Nik-Khah argue that the conventional wisdom suggesting economic rationality was the core of modern economics is incomplete. In this trenchant investigation, they demonstrate that the history of modern microeconomics is better organized as a history of the treatment of
information. The book begins with a brief primer on information, and then shows how economists have responded over time to successive developments on the concept of information in the natural sciences. Mirowski and Nik-Khah detail various intellectual battles that were fought to define, analyze, and
employ information in economics. As these debates developed, economists progressively moved away from pure agent conscious self-awareness as a non-negotiable desideratum of economic models toward a focus on markets and their design as information processors. This has led to a number of policies,
foremost among them: auction design of resources like the electromagnetic spectrum crucial to modern communications.

The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information provides insight into the interface between disputes within the economics discipline and the increasing role of information in contemporary society. Mirowski and Nik-Khah examine how this intersection contributed to the dominance of neoliberal approaches to
economics, politics, and other realms.


Author: Philip Mirowski, Edward Nik-Khah
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 07/03/2017
Pages: 312
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.90w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780190270056

About the Author

Philip Mirowski is Carl Koch Professor of Economics and the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of, among others, More Heat than Light, Machine Dreams, ScienceMart, and Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste.

Edward Nik-Khah is an Associate Professor of Economics at Roanoke College (USA). He has completed research on interactions between the Chicago School of Economics, the pharmaceutical industry, and pharmaceutical science; the neoliberal origins of economics imperialism; the distinctive role of George
Stigler as architect of the Chicago School; and the tensions emerging from economists' assumption of a professional identity as designers of markets, for which he won the K William Kapp Prize from the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy.