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Hutchison, Terence Wilmot (1912–2007)

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Abstract

Terence Hutchison, a specialist in economic methodology and the history of economic thought, defended the idea that, if economics was to make progress, economic propositions needed to be testable and confronted with evidence. This, together with scepticism about theory based on the assumption of perfect knowledge, informed not only his methodological writing but also his work on the history of economics.

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Bibliography

  • Coats, A.W. 1983a. Half a century of methodological controversy in economics: As reflected in the writings of T.W. Hutchison. In Methodological controversy in economics: Historical essays in honor of T.W. Hutchison, ed. A.W. Coats, 1–42. Greenwich: JAI Press.

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  • Hart, J. 2002. A conversation with Terence Hutchison. Journal of Economic Methodology 9 (3): 359–377.

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  • Tribe, K. 1997. Terence Hutchison. In Economic careers: Economics and economists in Britain, 1930–1970. London: Routledge, chapter 8.

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Acknowledgments

This article draws on an obituary written by the author for The Times, published on December 5, 2007. See Coats (1983a, b) for appraisals of Hutchison’s work, and the interviews recorded in Tribe (1997) and Hart (2002).

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Backhouse, R.E. (2018). Hutchison, Terence Wilmot (1912–2007). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_950

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