Aki Lehtinen

• PhD
• Professor at Nankai University

This paper criticises the Waltonian fictional view for misconstruing the role of imagination in scientific modelling, and for failing to provide an adequate account of the epistemology of modelling. It is argued that the central notions of prescribed imagination, props and principles of generation should be abandoned because they confuse more than...

This paper provides the first systematic epistemological account of simulated data in empirical science. We focus on the epistemic issues modelers face when they generate simulated data to solve problems with empirical datasets, research tools, or experiments. We argue that for simulated data to count as epistemically reliable, a simulation model d...

This paper contributes to the philosophical accounts of generalisation in formal modelling by introducing a conceptual framework that allows for recognising generalisations that are epistemically beneficial in the sense of contributing to the truth of a model result or component. The framework is useful for modellers themselves because it is shown...

Although economics is becoming increasing computational, economists are still ill at ease with simulation methods. We review central questions in the philosophy of simulation: what distinguishes simulations from other models and experiments? In what sense can simulations produce novel results? What implications does the epistemic opacity of simulat...

This paper provides a conceptual framework that allows for distinguishing between different kinds of generalisation and applicability. It is argued that generalising models may bring epistemic benefits. They do so if they show that restrictive and unrealistic assumptions do not threaten the credibility of results derived from models. There are two...

A review of Donald Katzner's book on economic modelling is provided. In addition to characterising the book, I give critical comments on the distinction between primary and secondary assumptions.

This paper provides an overview of recent mainstream macroeconomic debates. The discussion is framed in terms of the informal notion of a ‘core model’. A core model may refer to a commonly known set of model components and a common view about the economy, that enables focusing discussion and that allow for efficient communication. The notion of a c...

This paper provides metaphilosophical reflections on economic methodology by way of discussing the ‘Helsinki approach’. This approach combines the study of the practice of economics with an endeavor to retain a normative perspective. It also explains that it is difficult to find explicit espousals of mainstream economics in the methodological liter...

We investigate the applicability of Rodrik’s accounts of model selection and horizontal progress to macroeconomic DSGE modelling in both academic and policy-oriented modelling contexts. We argue that the key step of identifying critical assumptions is complicated by the interconnectedness of the common structural core of DSGE models and by the ad h...

Derivational robustness may increase the degree to which various pieces of evidence indirectly confirm a robust result. There are two ways in which this increase may come about. First, if one can show that a result is robust, and that the various individual models used to derive it also have other confirmed results, these other results may indirect...

Robustness may increase the degree to which the robust result is indirectly confirmed if it is shown to depend on confirmed rather than disconfirmed assumptions. Although increasing the weight with which existing evidence indirectly confirms it in such a case, robustness may also be irrelevant for confirmation, or may even disconfirm. Whether or no...

This paper provides a philosophical critique of social choice theory insofar as it deals with the normative evaluation of voting and voting rules. I will argue that the very method of evaluating voting rules in terms of whether they satisfy various conditions is deeply problematic because introducing strategic behaviour leads to a violation of any...

This paper generalises Enelow (J Polit 43(4):1062–1089, 1981) and Lehtinen’s (Theory Decis 63(1):1–40, 2007b) model of strategic voting under amendment agendas by allowing any number of alternatives and any voting order. The generalisation enables studying utilitarian efficiencies in an incomplete information model with a large number of alternativ...

It is argued in this paper that amalgamating confirmation from various sources is relevantly different from social-choice contexts, and that proving an impossibility theorem for aggregating confirmation measures directs attention to irrelevant issues.

As-if locutions are used (a) in order to indicate that an inaccurate or unrealistic assumption is being made because some inaccuracy or unrealisticness is negligible. This kind of claim has two sub-cases. (a 1) The as-if locution is used to indicate that the as-if claim in itself is inaccurate and that its inaccuracy does not matter for the purpose...

Consider the following situation: when two hunters set out to hunt a stag and lose track of each other in the process, each hunter has to make a decision. Either she continues according to plan, hoping that her partner does likewise (because she cannot bag a deer on her own), and together they catch the deer; or she goes for a hare instead, securin...

Odenbaugh and Alexandrova (2011) provide a challenging critique of the epistemic benefits of robustness analysis, singling out for particular criticism the account we articulated in Kuorikoski et al. (2010). Odenbaugh and Alexandrova offer two arguments against the confirmatory value of robustness analysis: robust theorems cannot specify causal mec...

This paper reconsiders the discussion on ordinal utilities versus preference intensities in voting theory. It is shown by way of an example that arguments concerning observability and risk-attitudes that have been presented in favour of Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA), and against utilitarian evaluation, fail due to strategic...

There are two different ways of interpreting the idea that payoffs in games are revealed preferences. One could argue, first, that choices define payoffs in the sense that preferences and choices are conceptually tied to each other, and secondly, that there is an experimental procedure that could be used for finding out players' payoffs. It will be...

Political science and economic science . . . make use of the same language, the same mode of abstraction, the same instruments of thought and the same method of reasoning. (Black 1998, 354) Proponents as well as opponents of economics imperialism agree that imperialism is a matter of unification; providing a unified framework for social scientific...

We claim that the process of theoretical model refinement in economics is best characterised as robustness analysis: the systematic examination of the robustness of modelling results with respect to particular modelling assumptions. We argue that this practise has epistemic value by extending William Wimsatt’s account of robustness analysis as tria...

Approval voting (AV) has been defended and criticized from many different viewpoints. In this paper, I will concentrate on two topics: preference intensities and strategic behavior. A voter is usually defined as voting sincerely under AV if he or she gives a vote to all candidates standing higher in his or her ranking than the lowest-ranking candid...

N. Emrah Aydinonat's account of the invisible-hand is analysed. One of the conditions for unintended social consequences is it requires that individuals' intentions are exclusively directed at the individual level. This condition is weakened in order to accommodate cases in which individuals may also aim at consequences at the social level but the...

Robert Sugden argues that robustness analysis cannot play an epistemic role in grounding model-world relationships because the procedure is only a matter of comparing models with each other. We posit that this argument is based on a view of models as being surrogate systems in too literal a sense. In contrast, the epistemic importance of robustness...

This paper studies the welfare consequences of strategic behaviour under approval and plurality voting by comparing the utilitarian efficiencies obtained in simulated voting under two behavioural assumptions: expected utility-maximising behaviour and sincere behaviour. Under approval voting utilitarian efficiency is relatively high irrespective of...

Like other mathematically intensive sciences, economics is becoming increasingly com-puterized. Despite the extent of the computation, however, there is very little true simulation. Simple computation is a form of theory articulation, whereas true simu-lation is analogous to an experimental procedure. Successful computation is faithful to an underl...

The most common argument against the use of rational choice models outside economics is that they make unrealistic assumptions about individual behavior. We argue that whether the falsity of assumptions matters in a given model depends on which factors are explanatorily relevant. Since the explanatory factors may vary from application to applicatio...

This paper examines the welfare consequences of strategic voting under the Borda rule in a comparison of utilitarian efficiencies in simulated voting games under two behavioural assumptions: expected utility-maximising behaviour and sincere behaviour. Utilitarian efficiency is higher in the former than in the latter. Strategic voting increases util...

This paper studies the welfare consequences of strategic voting in two commonly used parliamentary agendas by comparing the average utilities obtained in simulated voting under two behavioural assumptions: expected utility maximising behaviour and sincere behaviour. The average utility obtained in simulations is higher with expected utility maximis...

Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) has been under criticism for decades for not taking account of preference intensities. Computer-simulation results by Aki Lehtinen concerning strategic voting under various voting rules show that this intensity argument does not need to rest on mere intuition. Voters may express intensities by v...

All economic models involve abstractions and idealisations. Economic theory itself does not tell which idealizations are truly fatal or harmful for the result and which are not. This is why much of what is seen as theoretical contribution in economics is constituted by deriving familiar results from different modelling assumptions. If a modelling r...

A signal extraction problem in simulated games is studied. A modelling technique is proposed for deriving beliefs for players in simulated games. Since standard Bayesian games provide conditions for beliefs on the basis of the common prior assumption, they do not allow for non-uniform beliefs unless the game has some dynamic structure that allows f...

This paper argues that some parts of voting theory are inherently untestable. Theories which predict that an outcome of voting will be one that has a certain relation to individual preferences are particularly difficult to test because an empirical test requires information on those in-dividual preferences, and such information is not available. Th...

This paper studies the welfare consequences of behavioural heterogene- ity and strategic behaviour under approval and plurality voting by com- paring the utilitarian e¢ciencies under strategic and 'sincere' behaviour in a computer-simulation framework. The simulations were conducted with 2000 voters and three candidates. Under strategic behaviour v...

Het proefschrift biedt een formeel kader waarmee de welzijnsgevolgen van strategisch handelen gedetailleerd geëvalueerd kunnen worden. Aangetoond wordt dat strategisch stemmen onder redelijke veronderstellingen juist welzijnsverhogend is. Dit ondergraaft de normatieve geldigheid van de zogenaamde ‘Onafhankelijkheid van irrelevante alternatieven con...

This paper studies the welfare consequences of strategic voting in plu- rality and runoff rules by comparing the utilitarian efficiencies obtained in simulated voting under two behavioural assumptions: expected util- ity maximising behaviour and sincere behaviour. Utilitarian efficiency is higher with expected utility maximising behaviour than with...