Economic explanation, ordinality and the adequacy of analytic specification

This paper examines the implicit links between models containing ordinal variables and their underlying unquantified counterparts that are necessary to make the former viable theoretical constructions. It is argued that when the underlying unquantified structure is unknown, the permissible transform...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe journal of economic methodology Vol. 11; no. 4; pp. 437 - 453
Main Authors Katzner, Donald W., Skott, Peter
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Taylor & Francis 01.12.2004
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Economic analysis
Economic methodology
Economic models
Economic theory
efficiency wage theory
Efficiency wages
effort
Ordinal variable
Studies
unquantified variable
Wage theory
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Summary:This paper examines the implicit links between models containing ordinal variables and their underlying unquantified counterparts that are necessary to make the former viable theoretical constructions. It is argued that when the underlying unquantified structure is unknown, the permissible transformations of scale applicable to the ordinal variables have to be restricted beyond that which is permitted by dint of the ordinality itself. The possibility of an underlying structure being known but unspecified is also considered. In the case of the efficiency wage model, the only usable transformations of the ordinal effort scale are those which are multiples of each other.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:1350-178X
1469-9427
DOI:10.1080/1350178042000280621