ASSESSING CAUSAL ECONOMIC EXPLANATIONS

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in causal realism in th e methodology of economics. Some of this literature reflects a strong scepticism about the existence of sharp event-regularities or claws' i n the economic realm and, accordingly, about the prospects for the cov ering-law approach to explanation that dominates modern economic theor y. This paper outlines an alternative, causal, approach to economic ex planation and attempts to answer an important question often asked abo ut it: how should causal economic explanations be assessed?