A CAMREC Manifesto

We call for an economics that:

1. follows a descriptive (as opposed to a normative) approach - focusing on actual behaviour rather than 'ideal' behaviour;
2. broadly follows a biological (as opposed to a physics) paradigm - involving observation, field-work, categorization, and an emphasis on qualitative as opposed to quantitative models;
3. explores new ways of modelling - without an over-emphasis on optimisation, computable general equilibrium, game-theory, communication via price alone, genetic algorithms, etc.;
4. accepts the limitations imposed by the complexity of the subject matter - recognising that there will probably not be a `quick-fix' jump to predictive, numerical models as found in physics;
5. is defined by the subject matter rather than a set of techniques - so dealing with areas that will be directly relevant to business people, consumers, employees, and policy makers;
6. focuses on realistic problems thrown up by consumers and businesses rather than on abstract toy problems - no obsession with markets that clear, perfect information, prisoner's dillemas, etc.;
7. focuses on the processes and dynamics of economic phenomena without concern for steady states and equilibria;
8. avoids simplifying assumtions that are neither grounded in information about how the processes actually occur nor verified against unkown data - a rejection of the many `as if' assumptions that bedevil economics;
9. is open to new ideas and approaches from other disciplines, including: computational tools, formalisms, analogies, models, and methodologies;
10. does not cause academics to censor their own work in order to obtain promotion or deliberately distort their own ideas in order to obtain publication in core journals;
11. that encourages discussion and criticism of central tenets, theories and results in economics;
12. that is more ready explicitly to abandon failed models, theories and methodologies;
13. that presents a more accurate (and hence more modest) account of its achievements and capabilities to the public, businesses, funding councils and politicians;
14. that evaluates theoretical work against the realism of its assumptions and the usefullness of its results as well as its soundness and generality;

A. The use of information from the people involved of the processes they are involved in, e.g. panel data from consumers, descriptive observation, and the views of practictioners;

B. A validation of the structure of the model from the best verified models from outside economics (e.g. cognitive science);

C. Verification of models against hard data, using not only on point-by-point prediction but also the qualitively correct behaviour of its output;

D. Explicit statements of the expected conditions of application of models;

E. The use of computational tools from AI to implement a simulation approach based on an explicit agent to agent correspondance, avoiding artificial 'stand-ins';

F. The use of declarative and logic-based formalisms and tools to allow the formal capturing of qualatitive and emergent processes;

G. The inclusion of the content of communication and agreements between interacting agents (other than purely numerical ones such as price);

H. The regular re-evaluation of models against totally new data;

I. The production of possible scenarios to enrich the discourse of executives and politicians rather than the pretence of forecasting;

• that the use of formal and rigorous models is essential;
• that the methodology should be free of in-built political bias;
• that real-world data comes before any simulation or theory;
• that substantial variety is essential in the development of a new economics;
• that tough selection criteria must be imposed on all publications, e.g. by peer-review;
• that we may be wrong about the shape of such a new economics.